


Changed

by morrezela



Series: Bitten [4]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Knotting, M/M, Mates, Mpreg, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:55:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 42,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abandoned in the forest as a child, Jensen was a human raised by werewolves. He never knew where he came from, but he knew where he belonged. Now one little discovery is going to change his entire world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: MPreg, knotting, slight dominance kink, werewolves
> 
> Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to Bitten. Reading that fic first is highly advisable, but you don’t need to dig through all the timestamps.
> 
> You'll also notice, when the story gets far enough, that I changed the names of the remaining Padaleckis and Ackleses. I'd already used Jeff in earlier works, so I didn't change his name, but the rest of them have been assigned new monikers. I just felt uncomfortable with using the names and likenesses of people who aren't public figures.
> 
> All mistakes you find are my own.

There isn’t a lot that Jensen doesn’t love about his mate. It’s weird in a way. Honeymooners are supposed to love everything. Those out of the newlywed phase are supposed to be irritated by lots of small things. He doesn’t fall into either group.

It’s probably because he mated with his best friend. He’s known Jared for most of both of their lives, and lived with him a few times during his childhood. There isn’t a whole lot about Jared that comes as a shock, and Jensen has been in various stages of love with Jared since he picked a tiny, little puppy up from the forest floor.

Jared is significantly bigger now, but his enthusiastic wiggling has never gone away. His dimples have gotten deeper, and his muscles larger, but he still trips over his own two feet. He’s moved into much healthier eating habits, but Jensen finds himself hiding candy just like Jared’s momma always had to do.

It’s very difficult to actually hide foodstuffs from werewolves. It’s a nose thing, and Jared’s got one of the best sniffers in the pack. Jensen privately thinks nature made up for this amazing sense of smell by making Jared tone deaf. He doesn’t say anything about that though. Jared’s sensitive. It makes him the epitome of a gentle giant.

Except…

Well, except for when Jared gets all alpha male. It’s not frightening, not to Jensen anyway. Jared’s built for it, and he’s got a protective streak a mile wide. He’s forever nudging other weres along in their lives, encouraging them and stepping in when younger alphas try to dominate their packmates.

His whole personality is actually very alpha male, it’s just that his expression of it is so positive, sociable and damn kind that other werewolves forget what he is.

He gets assertive in public disagreements. A month before Jensen found out he was pregnant, Jared started campaigning for a local animal shelter with the city. His argument was that they had the resources and funding, and nearby human towns always have shelter overruns. The citizens of Denton don’t own many pets, and they could easily provide homes or at least a shelter to the unwanted and sometimes abused animals.

There was a lot of resistance to the idea. Werewolves get a little tense about dogs. It isn’t that they don’t have the same instinct towards a cute puppy that most humans have. It’s the stigma, the fear of what humans would say if they found out.

Jensen thinks it’s ridiculous. Humans don’t even know that werewolves exist outside of horror movies and sparkly vampire books. And if they did? Things would be so much worse than just a little bit of insinuation about what a were would want with owning a dog.

Of course, humans are the reason that Jensen is having to deal with Jared the dominant alpha and also why half the pack is in an uproar. They’ve got trouble coming their way, and it’s all thanks to Jensen’s existence.

The pack doesn’t say that of course. They’d never say that. Most of them would never even think it, and if they did, they’d chastise themselves into little whimpering balls of puppy fluff over it. Jensen is pack, and to blame him is to bring shame on themselves.

Which, okay, Jensen didn’t cause any of this. He’s the victim in the entire situation, from beginning to end.

That doesn’t mean that he isn’t the reason, the only reason that the pack is running around practicing stories and scrubbing through anything they can think of that might even hint at something being wrong in the town of Denton.

The police, the press and at least two private investigators are looking for Jensen Ackles, and they’re going to find him pretty damn quickly now that they have the right area of the country to go snooping around in. Jensen’s got records in the foster care system. He has college records. There are carefully buried police reports from when the Padaleckis found him in the forest.

He has college friends that are bound to remember that they went to school with a Jensen Wallace who looks suspiciously like all those photos of the Ackles family that have been published in the papers and on the local television stations since the discovery of the missing RV.

Ackles. It’s a weird thought to know what his real last name is. It fits in his head with a feeling of home that only Jared has ever brought him before. Wallace is the name that his official foster parents have, so it became his own, but he has never felt any ownership of it. He spent no more time with the Wallaces than he did with any other family group in the pack. They were only added to his file because they looked good on paper and looked fantastic for any visits from any human social workers.

Jensen had traded their last name for Jared’s without a second thought when they mated. It wasn’t giving away a part of himself because he’d never truly been a Wallace. Hell, most of the pack, himself included, had thought that Jensen was his last name. His fair coloring and classic bone structure certainly indicated that he could legitimately brag of northern European descent. They had only started calling him Jensen because that was the name that he could remember having, and they hadn’t wanted to take that away from him.

They had wanted to let him keep as much of his identity as he could.

Now that he knows his real last name, he sort of wants it back.

Not that he is going to tell Jared that. Not in a million years is he going to broach that subject with Jared. His mate would be hurt beyond all recognition at the thought that Jensen doesn’t want the family name. As far as Jared is concerned, Jensen is a Padalecki. He has been since Jared found him in the woods, and it’s only circumstances that kept him from having their surname all along.

Still, looking at the family portrait of the Ackles that the latest edition of the paper has, Jensen feels longing in the pit of his stomach that can’t just be ignored. The picture isn’t in color, but he can make out his father’s profile and the strain of loss around his mother’s eyes. He can see himself in the set of his older brother’s shoulders and the guilt in his sister’s smile. Their faces nag at the back of his mind teasing with memories of fondness and comfort that Jensen knows is just his imagination.

The papers say that the RV was stolen on a late summer day. Young Jensen Ackles had been sent outside to play by an exhausted mother who had been wiped out from taking care of his crying baby sister all night and into the morning. According to the report, he’d been fond of the family RV and had stolen the keys to play in it even though it had already been cleaned and prepped for storage for the winter.

It makes sense. Jensen’s taken care of enough pups to know the games that their fertile imaginations can come up with, and a giant vehicle with tiny beds and tinier seating places had to have been a castle in his young mind or maybe a bunker or a prison cell. Jensen isn’t sure what his preferred story land would have been back then. He spent most of the childhood he does remember playing wolf and trying to mimic all of the behaviors that came to his packmates naturally, observing them in their tussles and replaying the images in his mind later to learn what he couldn’t gain through actual experience.

But once upon a time, he was a human boy that loved his parent’s camper and had been stolen away in it.

Different reporters have different stories about what happened. Some call the ensuing investigation botched and biased, others simply blame it on the lack of technology and assistance that was available for kidnappings back in the day. There were no Amber Alerts when Jensen was five. The internet and cable news stations weren’t alive with breaking news airing vehicle descriptions.

Whatever the case, the police had immediately focused in on the family, calling the disappearance of both the family camper and child highly suspicious and the lack of a ransom call even more suspect. They interrogated his mother, barely recovered from the birth of her third child, relentlessly. When she gave them nothing, they badgered his older brother, demanding to know if he’d gotten too rough playing with little Jensen, if something had happened to his brother.

“Was there a lot of blood?” they asked him. “Did your father take care of it? Tell you it would be okay?”

It makes Jensen sick to think of, and makes the wall of lawyers surrounding the Ackles family a bit more understandable.

It seems that he caused his natural family as much trouble as he is about to cause his adopted one.

At least his life has symmetry to it.

“I wondered what happened to the papers,” Jared murmurs in Jensen’s ear as he wraps his arms around his mate’s waist.

Jensen carefully doesn’t freeze. He hasn’t done anything wrong, but he still feels guilty for pining after his human family when he’s always been offered so much with the one he has.

A huff of warm breath caresses his cheek, and Jared chuckles mirthlessly before saying, “I’m kind of insulted.”

Instantly, Jensen turns in his arms and places a gentle kiss on the side of Jared’s mouth. He doesn’t want his mate to feel second best or unloved or anything of the sort. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Jared quirks an eyebrow at him, clearly expressing his disbelief. “I’m pretty sure it is.”

“I just…” Jensen pauses before continuing. He doesn’t want to fight with Jared, but he will. “They’re my parents.”

“Yeah? And you think I don’t get that you want to learn about them? Jensen, you used to defend them constantly when you couldn’t even remember their faces. I know how much you’ve wanted to know about your family.”

Jensen very much doubts that. Jared has no way of knowing that each summer Jensen has packed a bag and gotten ready to go on the road looking for his family. He doesn’t know about the money Jensen put aside to hire an investigator or the college applications to universities clear across the country where the local population held a large number of Jensens in the phone book.

During his sophomore year of college, Jensen went so far as to buy a car and start driving. He made it seventy-eight point three miles away before turning around and heading back. Jeff had been worried, but he had completely bought Jensen’s lie about wanting his own wheels and getting carried away by driving around in them.

It was a hunk of crap car, but it got good gas mileage, and Jensen spent most of the rest of his college career playing driver for any extended road trips that his college friends had wanted to take.

Each and every time that he summoned up the courage to go searching, it had been Jensen’s fondness for Jared that kept him from leaving. They’d been attached to each other from day one, and every time that Jensen went to pack his stuff up and leave, he’d imagine Jared without him. It was never a bad image really. Jensen always saw Jared surrounded with pups and an adoring little mate, Jared with a house and a good career or Jared laughing with his buddies at some social gathering.

But it was always Jared without him, and even though Jensen had known that Jared would never close the door on him, going away would have changed them. They’d have drifted apart. That’s what human relationships did when they weren’t maintained, and werewolves weren’t that much different.

Jensen still would have been pack, but he’d have lost his standing with Jared. He couldn’t give that up, so instead of continuing on to another college after getting his basic four year degree, he came home. Another two years away, and he wouldn’t have been able to step away from the lure of humanity. He was pack, but he wasn’t a werewolf, and he’d been restless when surrounded by so many humans that he could easily assimilate with.

“Jensen?” Jared’s voice is soft, breaking into Jensen’s thoughts.

“I want to see them, Jare.” It’s a hard admission to make. Knowing about them? Jared will understand that. Meeting them is a different story.

Almost instantly, Jared shifts his hand from Jensen’s hip to stroke over the swollen area of his stomach. He hasn’t popped yet, probably won’t for another month or two. His abdominal muscles were the envy of many a wolf before he got pregnant, and their strength is keeping them from totally giving into the swell of the baby growing inside him.

“He’ll be fine,” Jensen tells his mate.

“They’re human,” Jared says in response. Normally that sort of comeback would have Jensen snarling and snapping and chasing Jared out the door with his tail tucked between his legs.

Then again, Jared normally would never make that sort of comment.

Jared likes humans. Jared keeps in better contact with his human friends from college than Jensen does, and Jensen was actually human when he went to college.

It’s just different when you’re talking about your child and his safety. Everything is different when it comes to offspring, and Jared’s got a protective streak that makes other weres cringe. Jeff still gives them a wide berth at family dinners.

“And if they see me, all they’re going to think is that I’m an overweight, white male, like a good percentage of the United States population is. Unless they spend a lot of time thinking up impossible scenarios in their multi-million dollar mansion, I can lay money on the fact that they are never going to look at me and think, ‘Hey, my kid must be knocked up by his younger husband.’”

“You’re not overweight,” Jared mumbles. It’s a concession to Jensen’s argument, and they both know it. It’s also Jared trying to diffuse the situation and get back on Jensen’s good side.

“I will be.”

Jared snorts, “Not for another few months yet.”

“By which point I’ll have already seen them and satisfied their curiosity.”

“Yeah, right,” Jared says as he pulls out of Jensen’s arms and glares at the paper.

“Don’t sound all enthusiastic on my account,” Jensen drawls sarcastically. Now that he knows to listen for it, he can hear the slight Texan lilt that enters his voice sometimes.

It’s always been there, but it was just one of those things that nobody seemed to notice about him once the pack decided to keep him. He knows that’s part of the reason this hasn’t all come out years ago. He’s pack, and they didn’t want him gone any more than he truly wanted to be gone.

“You think that they’re going to let you go once they have you?” Jared is skeptical. It doesn’t take a psychologist to see the mistrust in his eyes.

The suspicion just plain rubs Jensen the wrong way, and he explodes with, “You make them sound like they’re the kidnappers! I’m a grown man, Jare. They can’t have the government take me away from you.”

“Your parents and your brother have each hired an investigator to track you down. They have more money in one mutual fund than our entire family has combined!”

“Oh, and heaven forbid that rich people use their wealth to track down a loved one! What would you do if our little one went missing, huh? You going to throw up your hands and say, ‘Well at least I still have the house, let some other fucker take my kid’?”

Jared’s eyes snap with anger, and Jensen feels a stab of victory at the look.

“How can you…”

“It’s what you’re suggesting my parents do with me! You’re suggesting that they should just give up looking for their pup, and…”

“You aren’t a pup to them! You’re… And that isn’t even the point. They’re rich and powerful, and they could take this whole pack apart if they dig too deep. You know that.”

It’s true. The whole pack exists within human society, but there is a lot of paperwork that gets fudged by the authorities and doctors to make things look normal. Jensen’s foster care records are the least of the pack’s concern. The average age of marriage in the town is well below the national one, but that’s hardly a concern. It’s more of an easily explained societal quirk.

The outbreak of virginity amongst the young is quite a phenomenon, but virgins can lie as easily as non-virgins, and who the hell would go around asking young adults if they’ve lost it anyway?

But the divorce statistic? Yeah, that one isn’t so normal: only one in the last seventy years for the whole damn town and all of the members that have moved away. It was a forced mating. The guy was an abusive jerk. Officially he moved to Utah. Unofficially he’s been fertilizing the oak tree by the sheriff’s office since before Jared’s father was born.

Pack justice on rape is vicious. Mating is sacred and literally until death do we part, and the pack very forcefully parted the asshole from his life.

Still, there are worse things in the world than being labeled as a devoted and possibly zealous religious community that love each other and their super dedicated gay couples.

It’s the fertile males that cause the real problems. Officially, Jared and Jensen have hired a surrogate. Her name is Lucy. She lives over four hundred miles away in a very large city with a very small pack. When Jensen’s name started getting mentioned in the news, Jared had to mail her some money and some pregnancy suits to wear around just in case somebody got too nosy.

Normally all a fake surrogate has to do is not drink or smoke, and wander about half assedly pretending to be pregnant. They collect paychecks for the surrogacy that get funneled back to the real parents because they actually need all the money they can get their hands on to pay for diapers and formula and the like.

Now Lucy is having to wholeheartedly fake being with child, and that includes gaining some weight and wearing a padded suit under her clothes so that nobody gets suspicious about their baby. Not that anybody would jump on the bandwagon and scream werewolf, but allegations of illegal adoption isn’t a crime any pack member wants hurled at them.

And sure, a paternity test would easily enough prove who the child belonged to, but nobody wants werewolf DNA in the hands of any scientist that isn’t a member of the pack. They aren’t purely human, and that isn’t even taking into consideration what would happen if they got a hold of a fertile male’s genetic information. On the surface, nothing should stand out, but it would only take one lab rat looking too closely to realize that there is something funky going on in the gene pool.

Still, just because Jared is right about the digging, that doesn’t mean that Jared is right about how to keep it from happening.

“What makes you think that ignoring them will make anything better? I can’t hide, and running would paint a bull’s eye on this town. It’d probably cast direct suspicion onto your parents as being my abductors. Meeting with them early enough might just kill their suspicion. They’re parents, Jare. They want to see their child. They’re not going to keep doing background checks on me if they can just ask.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And you don’t not know that. You’re acting out of possessiveness and fear. You can’t protect us from this. Besides all of that, I want to see them. And I have the feeling that is exactly why you’re fighting this, I just don’t know why,” Jensen finishes his speech with an irritated flop down into the nearest chair.

Jared silently fingers the paper for half a second before turning his gaze towards his mate’s. “Of course you understand it. You wouldn’t have hidden this from me otherwise.”

Jensen tries not to grind his teeth together in anger. He hates fighting with Jared, but at the moment he hates Jared for pushing the point more. “I’m so sorry for trying to spare my mate some pain. Next time I’ll just rub it in the face of all your stupid insecurities, or would that be too human of a thing to do?”

Jared’s face contorts in hurt. “I would never…”

“But you do! You and every other natural werewolf in this damn town. I’m your fucking mate, Jare. Bitten and claimed and on my fucking knees taking it every other night. You could do me the favor of not doubting my allegiance and fidelity.”

“Jensen…”

“You know what? I’m going to go… take a nap or something. Me and my practically illegitimate baby are tired.” It’s a low blow, one that Jensen instantly wishes he could take back, but he doesn’t. He just stalks away ignoring the tears in Jared’s eyes as easily as he does the ones in his own.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The weight coming down on the mattress next to him wakes Jensen up. The sun was high in the sky and shining cheerily when he’d curled up in the blankets earlier, and now the room is filled with purples and oranges as the outside world settles into dusk.

He hadn’t even felt tired when he’d crawled under the covers, but he supposes that is what stress does to a guy.

A plaintive whine echoes in the room, and Jensen isn’t surprised when he rolls over to see Jared in his wolf form. Jared’s got a habit of shifting when he doesn’t want to talk and when he wants Jensen to forgive him and let things be easy between them. It’s actually one of the ways that Jensen finally cottoned on to the idea that Jared didn’t bite him just to make him pack.

Jared hadn’t come begging for forgiveness because he didn’t want things to be easy; he wanted them to be different.

Jared is beautiful in his wolf form. Over half the pack swears that Jensen has the most gorgeous pelt they’ve ever laid eyes on, but Jensen’s sure that they’re just immune to Jared’s beauty after living through his hellacious puppyhood.

His undercoat is a burnt red color topped with a slate grey overcoat. He’s huge in either form, and his eyes have that odd tilt to them that make his face almost look more fox than wolf. He’s striking and on the very edge of unnatural. He’s a wolf that would get stalked mercilessly should any true nature lover ever see him or, God forbid, capture him on film.

“Don’t think that you’re getting out of this one with a couple licks and a good snuggle,” Jensen grouses to his mate even as he buries his hand in Jared’s fur. The warning doesn’t have a lot of heat behind it. Jensen knows full well he accused Jared of things that aren’t exactly true, and he has his own apologizing to do.

Jared whines again and wiggles closer, licking first at Jensen’s ear and nose before scooting down and nipping gently at his bellybutton where his shirt has ridden up.

“Jare, stop it. I’m not shifting right now.”

In seconds, Jared furry bulk is replaced with his human one. He twists in a weird sort of grace as his body contorts and changes, so that when he’s done shifting, he’s face to face with Jensen, his hand pressed against their unborn child.

“It’s good for the baby,” Jared says as if there hadn’t been the slightest of pauses in their conversation.

“You just want me to shift so that we don’t have to talk, and you can woo me with body language and animalistic grunts.”

Jared smiles a little bit at that. “Yeah, and?”

“And it isn’t that simple?” Jensen puts a lot of stress on the upward lilt of his question. He wants it clear that he’s not actually asking one.

Jared doesn’t answer and buries his nose in Jensen’s neck instead, the pointy tip sneaking underneath the collar of his shirt. He snuffles there for a moment before just relaxing against Jensen.

“Trying to crush me to death now instead?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That’d hurt the baby,” Jared mumbles against his skin.

“Jared.”

“I don’t want you to go. I can’t protect you from them,” Jared sounds close to whining. It’s kind of pathetic for a grown wolf who is about to become a father.

“You realize that I’d take you with me, don’t you?” Jensen had assumed that Jared would realize that, but maybe he miscalculated.

“Yeah, I just… what if they’re mean to you? I… with the baby and us and the whole thing…” Jared trails off like he can’t find that right words, and Jensen feels a little sorry for him.

“So we don’t get along. We wouldn’t be the first family to have that problem. It’s better than sitting here wondering,” Jensen keeps his tone even and calming. He’s always been the reasonable one, and Jared’s always been the emotional one throwing himself into things wholeheartedly. There aren’t many people like Jared, and most days just thinking about him brings a smile to Jensen’s face.

Today though, Jared’s personality is a touch grating. Worrying and fretting is an unattractive trait in Jared because he does it with such enthusiasm.

“I’m not strong enough,” Jared whispers, shame coloring his tone.

“For what?” Jensen can’t keep the amusement out of his tone. Jared not being strong is a completely foreign concept to him. He hasn’t seen Jared ever be weak in character, and he hasn’t been weak in body since he went through puberty.

He doesn’t count the whole biting thing. That was just plain deviousness, not weak willed evil.

“I’m a horrible mate,” Jared declares instead of directly answering Jensen’s question. He pulls away and rolls to his side, giving Jensen an excellent view of his back as highlighted by the fading light. If he dips his eyes lower, he can ogle Jared’s backside, but it isn’t the time.

“Jare?”

“I don’t want to share, and… so help me, Jen, I don’t think I could keep myself from ripping into them if they hurt you. I mean, like literal biting and blood and honest to God assault. They could hurt you just because of me. I mean, they’re from Texas, right? They don’t like gays down there.”

“Way to embrace the stereotyping,” Jensen mumbles as he sits up to turn on the bedside lamp.

Jared flinches when the light comes on, but he doesn’t turn back around.

“Tho, thailor, you think that a coupl’o fagth like uth thouldn’t head out ta the big thity?”

Jared spins around at that and looks at Jensen like he’s lost his mind. “What the… was that even English?”

“Well, duh. I mean, the Ackles blood is obviously full of the negative societal images, so I figure that I should do my family proud by being my caricatured, queer little self.” Jensen doesn’t reel in his sarcasm. He doesn’t need to because Jared is being a judgmental moron.

“Je…”

“No. You need to actually face the fact that you can’t stop people from being mean to me. More than that, you can’t keep people from being mean to the little one in here,” he punctuates the sentence by placing a hand over his own stomach, patting it once consolingly for using his baby as ammunition in a fight with his father. Jensen worries sometimes that maybe he’s going to be one of those parents that uses his child as a messenger when he isn’t speaking to his mate.

“I just don’t want you, either of you, to be hurt. I want to protect you, and I can’t.”

“And you’re hurting yourself and me in the process. Jared, there isn’t anything wrong with wanting to protect us, but keeping me from them isn’t protecting me. It’s hurting me, and could ultimately end up hurting the pack. More importantly to me, it’s hurting you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jensen resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Don’t be sorry. Be you. I don’t want you to stuff down your instincts. I want you to talk to me about them. You’re an alpha. You’re never going to be able to get away from that, and I don’t want you to. I fell in love with you. The happy-go-lucky you and the possessive, snarly you are both still mine.”

“Like you talked to me?” Jared’s voice is soft, but the hurt is still there.

“I’m older, not necessarily wiser,” Jensen admits. He’s not going to ignore his part in their fight. Jared would let him if he pushed hard enough, but there isn’t any good that could come out of it.

“You know I never thought that about you, right? I didn’t turn you because I thought you were less than me or that you were, were wrong or something.”

“You liar, you certainly did think that I was wrong. You thought I was a pansy and making a bad decision based on a little pain,” Jensen says with a smile, deliberately misinterpreting his mate’s words.

“Jensen,” Jared growl is filled with impatience, “that isn’t what I meant, and you know it.”

“I know, and I was a heartless jerk for insinuating otherwise. I could have made you talk about this sooner, and I didn’t need to bring the human thing up. That’s my hang-up, not yours.”

It hurts to admit that, but it’s true. Of the two of them, Jared has never had the conflicted emotions about Jensen’s humanity that Jensen himself has had. He never once looked at Jensen as inferior during their childhood. Unlike the rest of the pack, he never even saw him as all that different. It was Jensen who always thought that he didn’t measure up, and it was Jensen who was afraid of the change.

There was a lot of pain involved in the transformation from pure human to werewolf, and Jensen had been terrified of going through that and coming out a different person on the other side. He’d been scared of not being wanted or wanting things he hadn’t before.

At the same time, he had craved changing. He’d wanted to be one of the pack instead of just being theirs. They loved him, he knew that, but he could never quite be with them in all ways.

He had been weak, and he’d been scared of not being able to suffer through the change with himself still intact. Better to be different physically than to change into some creature.

Not that growing a whole extra set of reproductive organs, a shitload of funky canine DNA and a goddamned lump on his dick hadn’t nearly driven him insane with pain, because it had.

“I loved human you,” Jared tells him gently.

“I gathered that much.”

“I wanted human you to have my babies.”

“Hence the biting.”

Jared looks peeved by his response. “Jensen, I’m being earnest here. Could you maybe not be flippant?”

“No, because there isn’t anything for you to be apologizing to me about. It’s called projection for a reason, Jare. I’m putting my fears onto your actions. You aren’t the one with the human-werewolf issues.”

Jared doesn’t look mollified by that, if anything he looks more worried.

“What is it?” Jensen asks him.

“About what you said earlier,” Jared hesitates and looks away.

“I said a lot of shit earlier. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“The part about the, where you’re on your knees all the time,” Jared’s face flushes red as he spits the words out.

Well, at least that is easy enough to fix.

“Our sex life is fine. I said that to make the point that I’m your mate, but I shouldn’t have. Okay? It was wrong of me to fight dirty like that.”

“You’re not letting me apologize for anything,” Jared grouses.

Jensen smiles a little at that. “Because you’re not apologizing for things that you’ve done. If you’d like to talk about the fact that you’re trying to keep me from seeing my parents, I’m more than open to apologies about you being a blockheaded alpha.”

“Yeah, about that, I might be a little jealous,” Jared admits to his own thumbnail, his eyes locked steadfastly on it and very much not at Jensen.

“Come again?”

“What if you like them better than our family? I’ve never had to share you before.”

That is ridiculous. Jared’s been sharing him since they dragged his dirty little self home, and Jensen lets him know that with an expressive arch of his eyebrows.

Jared rolls his eyes in response. “Please, like you weren’t over at our house every time the Alpha’s back was turned. You’ve always been ours more than you’ve been some other wolf’s. It was my momma you ran to when you were hurt, and my daddy that taught you how to play basketball right alongside Jeff. And I was always your favorite.”

“Meeting my parents isn’t going to make me less yours. I’m married to you even in human society.”

“Yeah, but what if you regret it?”

“Regret what? Turning? Mating with you? Our baby?” Jensen scoffs at the idea, but he understands it even though it irritates him that his mate is being an idiot.

“They’re rich and powerful and beautiful. It’s like you’re a prince, and I’m the big bad wolf who tricked you into being with me. I changed you. If I’d waited, if I’d just left you alone, you could go be with them.”

Jensen doesn’t verbally respond to that. Instead he smacks the back of Jared’s head and gets off the bed.

“Owww,” Jared complains as he rubs the spot that Jensen hit. “That’s spousal abuse.”

“You deserved it. God, Jared you didn’t entrap me, you know? I distinctly remember telling you to get lost, and I clearly remember coming here and telling you that I wanted to get knotted. You bit me. Big whoop. Neither of us were complaining about the results before, and I’m sure not complaining about it now. So get your head out of your ass about my damn family. I’m not leaving you. Ever. Wanting to know them doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t choose you and my home in a heartbeat. I just don’t think that I need to make that choice.”

Jared scrambles off the bed and wraps his arms around Jensen. “Don’t be mad. I don’t want to fight again.”

“You frustrate me so much sometimes,” Jensen tells him as he returns the hug.

“But you love me anyway,” Jared’s statement is more of a question than Jensen would like, but he lets it slide.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The absolute worst feeling in the world is when Jared is on the outs with Jensen. Each and every time it’s happened, Jared has been in a miserable mood. It makes him surly and cranky and eventually turns him into a dominant asshole that makes lesser alphas cower in his wake.

These days, there aren’t that many alphas that outrank Jared even though he’s relatively young. It can make things uncomfortable in public situations. Work wasn’t fun, and the clerk almost cowered and showed belly at the grocery store.

It sucks, and he can’t even blame it all on his mate because, well, if Jared was in Jensen’s spot, he’d want to know too.

He can’t even hide his feelings from Jensen until he can get control of them. It’s the major downside to being with a man that he’s spent so much of his life around. Jensen knows him through and through. He can read Jared’s body language and know what he’s thinking before Jared has a chance to even change his mind.

That his thoughts hurt Jensen pains him. It makes him feel immature to be jealous and possessive. It makes him wonder what he’s doing trying to start a family when he’s so obviously failing at being a supportive spouse.

Thoughts of their pup make him nervous and jittery. It sets his teeth on edge and makes him want to snap and snarl all other wolves from their home. It’s his protective instinct, and it scares him more than anything. He’s always felt possessive of Jensen, always wanted to buffer and shield him from attacks.

What he couldn’t prevent, he had wanted to soothe away with gentle whimpers and soft licks or kisses depending on what form he was in at the time.

But his child is a different matter entirely. The mere thought of him in danger makes Jared furious. That strangers might have a claim on him, no matter how generic, does nothing to calm his instincts.

The Ackles may very well be the best humans on the planet, but they are not pack. Jensen is pack, not Jensen’s biological family.

Jensen disagrees. He doesn’t believe them to be true pack, but he doesn’t believe them to be outsiders either. They are strangers, yet Jensen gives them more consideration than he would other humans.

It isn’t that Jared doesn’t understand the concept. It isn’t even that he thinks Jensen is wrong. It’s his instincts as an alpha that drive him to keep all outsiders away from his mate. They say that Jensen should be nesting without such worries bothering him. It should be a happy time where he can come home each day and enjoy the comforts therein. Jensen shouldn’t be in danger of others hurting him or the tiny pup he carries inside of him.

Jensen’s robe is hanging by the back door when Jared reaches it. He goes to work earlier and subsequently gets home earlier than Jared most days, so he goes for a run to eat up the time gap between their schedules.

That his robe is out means that Jensen is on his paws for his daily exercise routine. It’s odd because Jensen doesn’t like being looked at when he is shifted. He hates that other weres pay attention when he goes by. It’s a combination of the fact that they aren’t any more used to him being in wolf form than he is, and his unusual color coat. Neither the white base coat nor the golden tan color that beauty marks it are common in their pack.

Jared has tried to tell his mate that it’s just admiration. He’s tried to reason with Jensen that so stunningly beautiful a man should make as equally attractive wolf. All he has gotten for his troubles are grunts and playful shoves from an embarrassed mate in return. 

“I’m not that fascinating,” Jensen will mumble as red chases up his face and into his ears.

Jared begs to differ, but then again, Jared’s been fascinated by everything about Jensen since he was not even a year old.

The skittering of paws across the wooden porch announces Jensen’s return. Seconds later, Jared hears the screen door slam and the sound of water being poured into a basin. Some of the newer homes have actual sinks near their back doors or some even have outdoor hoses right next to the porch, but Jensen has always liked the look of the old style pitchers and basins, so Jared built a ledge to put one on and went shopping for the nicest set he could find.

Being able to run around on all four paws is a very freeing experience, but a were gets pretty dusty doing it. The palms of hands, the belly, and the feet all get at least a covering of dirt on them that remains after shifting back to human form. Wolves learn early to wash off the dirt, and pitchers and basins provide a decorative way of keeping water on hand for cleaning off without installing plumbing right up to the entryway of one’s home.

Jared hasn’t been to many human abodes outside of college dorm rooms, but he doesn’t think that many of them have door side sinks.

“Hey,” Jensen greets him as he comes in. He’s wrapped up in his black bathrobe, his feet shoved into soft, pink bunny slippers that Jared had purchased him as a gag gift to wear on their wedding night. He’d made a big deal about chasing his prey and catching quick, little bunny rabbits.

Jensen had thought it was hilarious. Then again, he’d given them to Jensen at their own bachelor party and Jensen had been tanked. It happened more often than not at werewolf weddings. The couple had usually already mated before making it to the altar, so there were no separate last flings with freedom. It was more of an excuse to party before the wedding and make bawdy jokes with the other weres.

“Hey, going for your walk on the wild side?” Jared asks as leans down to steal a kiss from Jensen’s lips.

“Yeah, you keep trying that pun there, Jare. Someday it might have a werewolf bite it and it can transform into something funny.”

Jared snorts and shakes his head. “Duly noted, but seriously, what’s up with the wolf running? Thought you didn’t like that?”

“I don’t. It’s just, you know how the doctor said it would be better for the baby if I shifted more. It’ll make it easier for him to shift when he’s born if he’s used to having his… mother shift with him.”

Jared smiles gently at his mate. Normally Jensen doesn’t have any sort of problem referring to himself as either their child’s mother or father. It’s normal for a male carrier to go by either, but he has been having issues with it since his human family went from hypothetical to very real. Jared knows that Jensen doesn’t regret their mating or their child, but having human relatives forces him to think about human societal norms.

It’s all very frustrating, and Jared would gladly tell the police, the press and the Ackles to go fuck themselves if he thought the he could get by with it. Jensen would likely bite him and withhold sex for a month if he did though. God only knew how long he’d withhold knotting.

So he doesn’t speak any of these thoughts to Jensen. He might be a wolf, but he has no desire to land himself back in the proverbial doghouse.

“And you chose today to take the doctor’s advice because?”

Jensen doesn’t answer at first, just leans in against Jared’s side. Automatically, he wraps his arm around Jensen’s shoulders, rubbing at the soft, black material of his robe, enjoying the way that it slides over the smooth skin underneath.

“They found me,” Jensen whispers into Jared’s shoulder.

Jared stiffens, the back of his neck prickling with tension, hackles that aren’t there trying to rise. “Who?” he asks, not bothering to keep the threat out of his growl.

“The police, but I imagine that the press aren’t far behind. My family’s private investigators are already calling in looking for confirmation on my ‘recovery.’ Chief Simmons is turning over what he has to the authorities, but he’s not sure who is ultimately going to end up in charge of the investigation. Kidnapping, theft, crossing state lines – add to that the fact that my family is both powerful and wealthy, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Jared keeps the question non-threatening.

“The phone was ringing when I got home, and I didn’t want you getting hurt trying to rush home. There wasn’t anything you could do, Jare. They’re sending the DNA samples that they have of me to be tested. Hopefully they’re still viable otherwise we’re going to have to come up with a story as to why exactly I won’t let them do a cheek swab. Religious beliefs maybe or trauma – I don’t think that they can court order me to prove myself an Ackles unless I go after their money. I can just as easily deny them, say I don’t want anything to do with them or their money. Maybe finger prints? I could’ve been an obsessive finger painter in my youth.”

Jared leans down and kisses the top of Jensen’s head. “You’re rambling. That’s my job.”

“Yeah, well, running around on all fours is your job too, but that didn’t stop me from ripping around the neighborhood like a holy terror earlier. You have no idea how the little guy throws my center of balance off when I’m running in human form.”

“It’ll be fine. We’ve dodged human bullets before, we’ll dodge this one.”

Jensen shivers. “Can you not use the word ‘bullet’? I’d rather not think about some whack job deciding that the pregnant freak needs to meet his end Loner Ranger style.”

“Hey,” Jared says as he turns Jensen to face him, “it’ll be alright.”

“Don’t placate me, Jared. You’re no good at it.”

“You’re right. The world as we know it is about to collapse, but Jensen, it’s not going to be that bad. Nobody in this town did anything wrong.”

Jensen laughs though there is very little amusement in the sound. “Promise?”

“Absolutely not. You think I want to sleep on the couch if this all goes cockeyed?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Despite Jensen’s worries, the DNA test goes through without a hitch, and while it alleviates one worry, it brings a whole new crop of worries with its success. Jensen is an Ackles, and while that news isn’t surprising, it is now official. It’s a fact that isn’t going to go away.

Another thing that isn’t going to go away? Outside investigators.  
Jensen loses track of how many of them he talks to, but he doesn’t lose track of their questions, mainly because they just keep asking the same ones over and over again. It doesn’t matter which law enforcement agency is performing which investigation. They all want to ask the same things, and they all get nowhere.

His faulty child’s memory provides no suspects as he can’t actually remember his abduction. He recollects stumbling through the woods and then being rescued. He remembers remembering his one name and his birth date, but beyond that, Jensen doesn’t have much about the time of his abduction.

The officers that question him are disappointed, but not overly so. They seem to know that Jensen was a child at the time. More than that, they seem to grasp the fact that attacking a clear victim isn’t going to win them any points with the press or their superiors.

The local pack officials have it far worse than Jensen. The Ackles name is a big one, and there is more than one investigator that would like to be the one to solve the crime. They seem to think that badgering the local authorities about their thoroughness or pointing fingers of blame is a great way to crack the case.

Jensen’s in-laws get questioned, and it sets his teeth on edge. He understands why the Padaleckis are suspect given that they found him, but they’re his pup’s grandparents. It makes him ornery and aggressive. It’s a threat to his pack, and it fucks with his mind that he feels so protective of them. It’s distinctly alpha behavior, and he admits, if only to himself, that it frightens him.

Technically, he’s submissive to Jared, but he’s half of a whole. He isn’t a slave or soldier to be ordered about. He’s made other alphas cower, sure, but it was only ever to make a point. Jensen would rather argue than enforce.

Jensen generally ignores the fact that he took the current Alpha down in a fight. He was unmated and angry. He had a very large point to prove, and was in a way out to assert his standing in the pack. He’d spent years observing each wolf’s play and fighting style while hanging out on his two legs, allowed to see but not participate. He’d had no say in any fight, but he’d learned more from observation than most learned in participation. It was intelligence that led to his quick victory over the Alpha.

It isn’t that Jensen feels his protective instinct is unnatural per se. It’s the violent nature of it that causes him concern. He’s a plotter. It might be a natural preference, or it could be a learned one from growing up amongst a group of people whose physical prowess would always be stronger than his own. Even Jared’s little sister had possessed more strength than Jensen’s human body could.

The ringing of his doorbell interrupts Jensen’s thoughts. He’s grateful for the distraction even as he wonders who would be coming to his door rather without calling him first. When he gets closer to it, he can smell the person on the other side. The dainty floral scent of perfume indicates a woman, and as he gets nearer, he can smell the lighter, softer scent that indicates that he’s correct. There’s also no wildness to her smell, which means she’s human.

Jensen fights back an instinctive snarl and opens the door. He’ll see if he can get rid of her easily before forcing the intruder off his front step.

“May I help you?” Jensen doesn’t keep the growl out of his tone. He’s naturally reserved and a touch grouchy, so there isn’t any need to mask the feral sound. It’s close enough to the disgruntled noises he used to make when he was fully human that the change in it wouldn’t even register to human ears.

“Jensen?” The woman asks, all sunshine and ease. It’s practiced. The way her eyes are tense is at complete odds with her smile. Her body is loose, but the posture is held too tightly for it to be natural.

“Who are you and what to you want?” Odds are she’s a reporter. The authorities would be showing badges or something, so Jensen doesn’t feel one bit of remorse for being rude to her.

She smiles even more at his tone and extends her hand saying, “Mia Saunders. I work for your father.”

Jensen chokes back his instinctive response that he doesn’t have a father. He does, of course, he just never knew him.

“And?” he prompts, ignoring the way that Mia’s face loses some of its shine while her hand drifts awkwardly back down to her side.

“Look,” she starts off, the false friendliness dropping from her demeanor, “I know that you don’t know me, but could you possibly let me talk before passing judgment? I’m not out here for a story. I’m out here because your father has shelled out a hell of a lot of money to me to find you.”

Jensen glares at her but gestures for her to come inside. She nods at him once in thanks and steps in, turning to face him as soon as he closes the door.

“So, should I call you Jensen or would you prefer Mr. Wallace?”

“Padalecki,” Jensen corrects mindlessly as he moves past her and into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry?”

“My last name is Padalecki. I changed it after I got married. I wasn’t exactly attached to Wallace. Shouldn’t you know that being an investigator and all?”

Mia doesn’t so much as blush let alone take offense at the question. “I’ve got stiff competition out there. Your big brother hired a big time guy to find you, but he’s out to make a name for himself. He doesn’t so much care about his client’s wishes as much as he cares about getting in the papers. He wants to solve the crime. Both of us were tasked to find you.”

“And you got here first. Congratulations,” Jensen doesn’t bother keeping the sarcasm from his voice as he pulls out a stool from the kitchen island to perch on.

Mia grabs another stool, uninvited, and sits down next to him. “Word was out that you’d been found. Jordan Ames is busy trying to get somebody on the inside to give him the scoop. I figured that a town this size couldn’t have that many orphaned children in it, so I dug through some old news papers. You weren’t exactly hard to find. I swear that most of the families around here have been here at least seven generations.”

“Your point?”

“I haven’t got one, actually. I’m not here to discuss small town sociology. I’m here because I’ve got a bunch of people down in Texas who would love to see you.”

“And you thought you’d just knock on my door?”

Mia’s perpetual smile twists into amusement at Jensen’s question. “Normally I’d call, but I figured you wouldn’t be answering your phone.”

“And why is that?”

“Intuition? Small town, big money, pretty man, crime: It’s a recipe for news story of the week. Reporters are going to be crawling all over you.”

Jensen swallows and tries not to let the thought upset him. There are things that he definitely cannot afford to have found out. The biggest one is sitting just inside his abdominal wall with a personal mission of giving his mother heartburn at night.

The front door crashes open, and Jared’s voice bellows through the house. “JENSEN!”

Jensen makes to get up from his perch, but Jared storms in looking ten kinds of distraught, effectively stopping Jensen from moving. “They’ve got my dad down at the station. My momma is in tears. She can’t stop crying about the things they’re accusing her of! Those, those bastards are trying to say that they took you. They’re asking for alibis for the day you were taken. Alibis! Who the hell remembers where they were on some day nearly twenty years ago? How the fuck are they supposed to prove that they weren’t in fucking Texas?”

Mia stares at Jared, her frame shrinking. Jensen doesn’t blame her. Jared rarely gets truly angry, but when he does, his massive size tends to make all but the most aggressive of alphas cower.

Jared sniffs and finally seems to realize that there is a stranger in their home. “Who are you?” He snarls, not at all his normal, affable self.

“Jared,” Jensen says softly, placing a hand on his husband’s arm, “this is Mia. She works for my father.”

Jared glares at the woman and wraps an arm around Jensen’s shoulders. It’s a move of pure possession. One that is obviously unnecessary, but understandable given Jared’s level of upset.

“Jared is your husband?” Mia sounds surprised, and it occurs to Jensen that if she didn’t know that he’d changed his last name, she hadn’t seen his wedding notice. If she hadn’t seen that, then she had probably assumed that he had married a woman. He didn’t need to marry a man to change his last name, after all.

“I am,” Jared says challengingly.

Mia smiles placatingly at him, and Jensen has to give her props for being able to pull it off even if it is a bit brittle and stiff.

“Well, I’m certainly sorry to hear about the things that your family is going through. If you’d like, I could speak to Mr. Ackles about a lawyer? He was very specific in wanting to offer any support that he could to Jensen, and as he no doubt loves you very much…”

Jared tenses under Jensen’s fingertips. Jensen can tell that he’s on the verge of ripping the woman a new one for daring to assume anything, let alone bring in defense for his family from an outsider.

Still, Jared isn’t quite in his right mind, and there is no way that the Padaleckis can find better lawyers than what the Ackles’ fortune can hire. They probably have attorneys on retainer in every state. Advice on who to contact will be invaluable. Jensen isn’t willing to let his loved ones get caught up in some legal nightmare if he has an opportunity to prevent it.

“Actually, we’d love any advice he’d be able to provide. We aren’t used to dealing with the press let alone this situation,” Jensen cuts in before Jared can open his mouth.

Jared’s entire body goes stiff, but he doesn’t contradict Jensen.

Mia looks a bit shocked. Jensen doesn’t blame her. Jared’s body language is easy to read, and she doesn’t appear to be deficient in that area.

“I’ll be sure to ask,” she says, her voice barely wavering.

“Yes, well, why don’t you leave and go do whatever it is that you do when you’re not bugging people.” Jared’s words are terse and snappish, but Mia doesn’t appear to be ruffled by them.

Jensen supposes that she must get a lot of uncomfortable responses in her line of work.

“Would you like to pass on any other information?” Mia asks, her gaze resting on Jensen.

Of course he does, he sort of has to if he’s going to ask for his father’s help, and it isn’t like he wasn’t going to eventually contact them anyway.

Jensen scribbles down his email address on a piece of paper and hands it to Mia. He doesn’t want to give out his phone number, not yet, and certainly not with Jared glaring about the room as if the very walls are offending him.

He hurries the investigator out the front door as politely as he can. Her eyes tell him that she knows what he is doing, but she doesn’t look put out about it. Mia more than likely understands the need for Jared to not have strange company in his house.

By the time that Jensen closes the door and goes back to the kitchen, Jared has chopped up both of the onions that Jensen had bought and is working his way through their stash of garlic. Jensen wouldn’t complain except for the fact that the red onion was very specifically purchased to the purpose of going on top of his salads in nice rings, not getting tossed into a pot to make chili or whatever it is that Jared thinks he’s making.

“What’re you doing?” Jensen asks as he leans against their kitchen island, watching Jared get unnecessarily violent with the little cloves, their tiny white bodies disappearing whole behind Jared’s large fingers only to reappear in massacred piles of minced flesh.

“Chopping garlic,” Jared grunts tersely.

Jensen blows out a breath of air in an attempt to stay calm. He knows what is wrong with Jared, but it won’t help either of them if Jared’s going to be in denial about it.

“Okay. Why are you chopping up the garlic?”

“Maybe to get that bitch’s scent out of our home,” Jared growls accusingly.

The insinuation in Jared’s words hurts, Jensen isn’t going to bother to pretend that it doesn’t, but he understands where Jared is coming from. He’s upset and unable to do anything about the threat to his family. Then Jensen’s rich father sends a woman to their home that oh so easily offers help that Jared can’t provide.

It’s a hit to his ego and his alpha male tendencies even before Jensen adds in the conflicting emotions Jared is feeling about the Ackles family.

“This isn’t my fault, Jared,” Jensen says softly, barely louder than the obnoxious thwack of the knife blade smacking on their wooden cutting board.

Jared stops his mincing, but doesn’t look over at him. “I know that.”

“Feels like maybe you don’t,” Jensen tells him, throat tightening as the words come out.

“Jensen…” Jared looks over at him helplessly. He’s got the same look in his eyes that he did the first day that Jensen went to junior high, and Jared was stuck in grade school. It’s the pathetically lost look of a puppy that’s been left behind and doesn’t know what he did wrong or how to fix it.

“I know you love me, and I know that you wouldn’t ever want me gone. I’m sorry that your family has to go through this because of me, but I can’t help what’s happening when I can’t remember the truth to prove those investigators wrong. If I could, I would’ve done it a long time ago.” Jensen feels the prick of tears forming at his eyes, and he wishes that he could blame pregnancy hormones for them, but he knows that they aren’t the cause.

Angrily he closes his eyes and swipes at them, wishing that he could just rewind time to that comfortable place that he’d been in not so long ago. That happy time where all he had to do was enjoy being with his mate and spend time arranging and rearranging the nursery plans.

Strong arms wrap around him, and Jared places a kiss on the top of his head. “I’m an ass,” Jared whispers against his hair.

“No,” Jensen begins to deny it, but Jared cuts him off.

“I am. I’m angry, and I’m taking it out on the most important person ever. I… I don’t like what’s happening, and I’ve got some serious jealousy issues going on, but you’re my mate. It’s our family getting interrogated about this. I don’t have any sort of claim on them that you don’t.”

“I’m not sure that everybody in the pack will agree with you on that.”

“Screw them,” Jared snaps defensively. “You’re my mate, not theirs. If they don’t like it, if they blame you, then we’ll just go find another pack to join.”

Jensen snorts and buries his face against his husband’s chest. He can still smell the tension and worry there, and he knows that Jared is only talking about leaving to make Jensen feel better. Jensen’s okay with that. What the pack thinks isn’t the point. What Jared thinks is far more important than anything they could ever say to him.

“You do realize that if being your mate makes your family mine, then it goes the other way too?”

“Do we have to talk about this right now?” Jared’s tone is a touch whiney.

“I don’t really think we can avoid it much longer,” Jensen points out. “Even if we could, I’m pregnant. The longer I wait to meet them and see what they want, the more difficult it will be, especially with the travel. I don’t want them here, and you know what the doctor said about traveling in the later months of pregnancy.”

“Can’t I just give a blanket statement of support?”

Jensen huffs and glares at him. “Are you going to mean it?”

“Of course I…”

“Because you know that I’ll hold you to it, and you know what I want. And I’m going to feel fucking guilty the entire time because I’m extracting this promise from you when you’re upset, but that isn’t going to keep me from fighting dirty with you.”

Jared presses a kiss on Jensen’s forehead. “I know. I’ve known that about you since I was eight and you tricked Jeff into buying us ice cream.”

Jensen laughs softly at the memory. “He had it coming.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

When Jensen gets the email from his mother, timidly asking him to meet him in person, he doesn’t respond right away, and he doesn’t tell Jared. He knows what he wants, and he knows what Jared wants. The two desires don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but Jared’s fears and attitudes are making them that way.

There are many things that Jensen is, but stupid isn’t one of them. At least, it normally isn’t. He doesn’t claim to know everything that Jared thinks because he was proven wrong on that count by the whole biting incident. But on the whole, he feels secure in the assumption that Jared would be more than happy for the surname Ackles to disappear from the world entirely.

That pisses Jensen off to no end. He married an alpha, not an unreasonable jackass.

But he also knows that Jared is trying, and that is the reason that he’s loathe to bring up his mother’s request for a meeting. The attacks on the Padalecki family are still fresh in Jared’s mind. He’s defensive, yet the reason that Jared can breathe any sigh of relief is because of the lawyers that Jensen’s family directed them to seek out.

And Jensen is very grateful for his biological family’s assistance even if Jared is suspicious about their motivations. He loves Jared’s parents, and even though Jeff hasn’t been as supportive and happy about their mating as Jensen would’ve liked, Jensen still feels close to him. He was like a brother to Jensen long before Jared made it official by putting a ring on Jensen’s finger.

The Ackleses helped to protect the family Jensen knows, and he doesn’t think that it is too much to ask that they be allowed the chance to know him in return, especially given how Jensen is very certain that they paid for some of the legal fees that Jensen’s in-law racked up while trying to get investigators off their backs.

A petty part of him wants to yell at Jared for not realizing how hard the Ackleses are trying, but Jensen doesn’t want to end up in a fight with Jared about his biological family. He wants Jared to come to terms with their existence and place in Jensen’s life without coercion. More than that, he wants Jared to help him define what place in his life he wants them to have.

Jensen knows that they cannot be close. It hurts to know that it will never be an option, but there just isn’t any way that he can have all of the children he’d been planning on having and have close human relatives. Werewolf pups like to spend most of their time in their wolf form when they’re younger. It’s more convenient for them because they can get up and move around far sooner than they can in their human bodies.

A mother or father can force their children to shift, but keeping that sort of watch on more than one child would be an exhausting and ultimately fruitless effort. Jensen knows the kind of stubbornness and deviousness that will be running in his children’s veins. There is no way that he’d be able to hide their forms from his relatives if they were around often.

But not being able to have a close relationship isn’t the same as not having one at all, and as much as Jeff is a brother to Jensen, he has his own big brother that he’d like to get to know better as well.

Michael Ackles reminds Jensen of an alpha. The tone of his emails is always concerned and shades of protectiveness always come through. Where Jensen’s parents are always careful in how they phrase things, and they’re always purposefully nonintrusive with their questions, Michael is more apt to tell Jensen things.

He’s told Jensen how Jess, their little sister, has felt guilty for years about Jensen’s abduction. She blames herself for tiring their mother out to the point that she sent Jensen outside to play. Jessica worries that Jensen won’t like her, that he’ll hold a grudge against her.

Michael tells him how Jensen’s parents worry about scaring Jensen away. He tells Jensen how much they want to get to know him, and he encourages Jensen to open up to them.

It’s… nice. Michael is a source of information and advice that helps Jensen figure out how to talk to his parents, and he imagines it is quite a lot like what having a big brother should feel like. Even though Michael tends to both share and ask for more information than their parents do, Jensen doesn’t feel the pressure with him that he does with his parents.

Maybe it’s because he wants to please them. That part of him that is still a child wants their approval where he doesn’t have that same pushing need with Michael. Jensen wants to get to know him, but he doesn’t necessarily seek out his approval. Jensen has experienced closeness with children his own age, and has benefitted from their protectiveness. He’s had sibling type relationships, so he doesn’t crave them like he does a parental one.

And it’s that craving that makes him hesitate about setting things up with his mother. He wants to go, almost needs to as a matter of fact. He just doesn’t want to put more strain than is needed on his relationship with Jared.

It’s a tricky balancing act, and it takes Jensen a while to figure it all out. He’s asked Jared to not read his emails, and he knows that Jared has respected his wishes despite how the curiosity has got to be killing him.  
It isn’t that Jensen wants to keep Jared from his biological family. If all goes well, he hopes that someday they might at least get along well even if they’ll have to wait until their children are old enough to control their shifting before they dare to grow anywhere near close.

He just wants to have them to himself for a while. He wants to be special, and while he is part of a whole, one half of Jared and Jensen, he wants to develop his relationship with his family as Jensen first. It’s maybe unfair of him to want that, but he does.

But he’s run out of time for that one on one connection. His parents want to physically see him, and there is no way that Jensen will go to that alone. He hasn’t even spoken to them on the phone yet, reticent to break their easier communication on the internet and somehow loathe to hear his mother’s voice for the first time through the tinny connection of even the clearest of phone connections.

He wants to see her face and smell her scent when he listens to her voice for the first time, and he guesses that he might just get that from her, because she hasn’t asked more than once to speak to him on the phone.

And despite his own worries about a personal meeting, Jensen is ready to see her. He wants to touch the woman that gave birth to him and listen to the heartbeat of his father. It’s scary and uncomfortable, but he knows that he needs it.

Jensen also knows that he can’t put it off. As much as he’d like to let his fears rule him, he can’t put off meeting them for much longer. He doesn’t want to be too far along when he meets them, and he can’t put it off until after the baby is born.

So he avoids the computer for a few days while he works his magic on Jared’s defenses. He very carefully avoids having sex with his mate during his ‘negotiation period’ because he doesn’t want Jared to think that he’s bribing him or trying to manipulate him.

He hems and haws about the general topic of physically meeting the Ackles clan, and is ultimately upstaged by his own mate when Jared suggests that they just arrange the meeting with them already.

Jensen half suspects Jared’s suggestion is based entirely out of his own frustration at not seeing any of the emails, but he doesn’t mention that suspicion. There are questions that are better left unasked, and some gift horses that should never go near a dentist.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Airports are the most infernal of places. Jensen is very certain that the hub concept was created purely to make people feel hate when they miss their connecting flight because their arriving one lands late on concourse A and their departure gate is on concourse F.

Not that he has that particular problem. He made certain to put plenty of time between their flights to minimize the chance of being stranded. It made for some interminably long waits when their planes actually arrived on time, but Jared has always been a people person, and he is busy amusing himself by watching all of the different individuals that are milling around.

Jensen isn’t one half as happy as his mate. He’s a little bloated and uncomfortable. The baby’s weight is starting to make its presence known, and his back is sore. His feet suddenly just decided to start hurting halfway through their stroll to their departing gate. While Jared was completely attentive and supportive, it still sucked to have complete strangers look at him with that odd mix of censure, guilt and pity.

They were all thinking, “Look at the fat man. He’d be so pretty if he had kept the weight off. Now look at him.” At least, that is what Jensen assumes they were thinking. It seems like a fairly probable supposition.

Part of his current discomfort is his own fault. He’s been rushing around and not eating properly. Both he and Jared had to switch shifts and ask favors to get the time off for the trip. It isn’t that they don’t have the vacation time, but they need to save as much of it as possible for when the baby comes.

FMLA leave is all well and good, but they need all the money that they can get.

“You feeling okay?” Jared’s voice is warm and concerned and just a hint protective.

“I’m fine, just… the last time I was around regular humans, I wasn’t fat.”

Jared snorts and takes his hand. “You’re not fat now. Even if that was all blubber under there, you wouldn’t be half as heavy as most of these people. And if you were, I’d still love you.”

“You’re genetically compelled to want me,” Jensen points out, not to argue with Jared, but more to avoid the admission that he’s being an idiot.

“There is that,” Jared admits easily, “but I think you’re hot. Always have, always will.”

Jensen laughs and tugs his mate’s hand in to kiss it. “I severely doubt that you were thinking anything of the sort when you were younger. If I recall, you were mostly interested in the fact that I was taller and could steal cookies for you.”

“And you don’t think that’s hot? Jensen, do we need to go to couples counseling for our incompatible sexual tastes?” Jared teases him.

A man walking by outright gawks at them and sneers. Jensen happily flips him off, but it’s Jared’s glare that gets the man moving on his way.

“Apparently your impressive bulk is good for something other than manhandling me in the bedroom,” Jensen notes.

Jared arches an unbelieving eyebrow at his mate. “I thought it was my impressive muscles that made me the most qualified man to bring in the groceries.”

“That too.”

“Jensen,” Jared’s voice goes serious in its tone, and Jensen turns to more fully look at him.

“I know that meeting your family means a lot to you, but I want you to know that whatever they say, whatever they think, you are the most beautiful and intelligent man on the planet as far as I’m concerned. “

Jensen smiles back at him before leaning over to peck a kiss on Jared’s cheek. “You can be so sweet sometimes.”

Jared just beams back at him. “It’s all the candy I eat.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They arrive in the Dallas airport right on schedule. Jared swears it’s a bad omen at the same time that Jensen declares it a good one. They bicker about it all the way to the baggage claim until Jensen finally pulls out his, “I’m four years older than you and know better,” card. The move lacks the maturity that those four years should technically give him, but he doesn’t really care at that point.

Jared refuses to allow Jensen to grabs their bags off the moving carousel. It would be irritating except for the fact that it has nothing to do with Jensen’s pregnancy and absolutely everything to do with Jared’s fascination with rotating objects. If he could, he’d put a greyhound track up in their backyard for the sole purpose of chasing the stupid wooden rabbit.

Needless to say, Jensen doesn’t get it. He probably never will. Being a member of the pack, mating with that one special person, bearing children when it should be unnatural: those things Jensen understands about his werewolf nature. Chasing something in a circle just for the hell of it? He isn’t ever going to get that. It’s got to be some sort of wolf thing that comes with being born a were instead of being turned.

“Did you have fun?” Jensen asks drolly when Jared returns with their luggage.

Jared just grins at him in return and starts moving towards the taxi area. It’s a hit to Jensen’s pride that they’re not renting a car. He likes to drive and used to do quite a bit of it back in his old college days. But he’s frazzled and distracted with thoughts of his parents, and Dallas has just a bit more traffic than the sleepy town of Denton.

His mate has many wonderful attributes, but Jared’s driving skills aren’t listed amongst them. He didn’t embrace the whole motor vehicle thing in college. Jared’s always been a walk, or more accurately, run everywhere kind of guy. He’s all outdoors and sunshine and exercise. His big city driving skills are far beyond rusty to the point of disintegration.

So a taxi it is.

Their hotel is fairly close to the meeting place that Jensen’s parents suggested. It’s pure happenstance that the locations are near each other. The hotel is one that is owned by a member of one of the local werewolf sects, and it’s guaranteed friendly to out of town wolves.

While the Dallas pack is still one large pack, it’s spread out over the entire city and a good portion of the outlying area as well. Their Alpha cannot easily move around them and the scents of their packmates get lost in the smell of the city.

Like any big city pack, they long ago started forming mini packs or sects in the group to enable communication and bonding without drawing attention to themselves. They could have all settled in one area, but drawing the sort of attention to their ways that such was as undesirable in Dallas as it would have been in Denton.

The sects all have appointed leaders who collect and pass information to each other. Jared and Jensen will be meeting with one of the sect leaders when the reach the hotel. Scarves that they’ve been wearing since they boarded their first plane will be handed over to the leader and some customary greetings will be exchanged, and that should be the end of their formal interactions. The scarves will be cut up into pieces and given to each sect leader and the Alpha proper so that they can know on scent the visitors in their area.

In times gone past, the declaration was more important than it is in the current world. When humans believed in werewolves and hunted them close to extinction, turning humans was a risky proposition. For every were that a pack gained, it also gained the hatred and focus of the humans even when the turning was consensual on the former human’s end.

Stealing pack members had become a popular way to avoid pitchfork toting, gun firing, fire bearing mobs out for wolf blood. An alpha with a smaller pack would make his or her way into another’s territory and challenge for dominance either by outright fighting or by seducing the other members away.

It was a frowned upon practice, but it started to happen with alarming frequency. With that changing of sides came pack members who started to lose their own pack identity and started to actively seek out the ‘best deal’ on pack structure and alphas.

Following human greed while a werewolf is a dangerous proposition. Inside every were is basically an animal. The more that one gives into base and petty emotions, the closer one gets to violence and simply taking instead of rational thought.

Of course in modern times, a werewolf’s job could easily move him from one pack’s territory several times in a month let alone a lifetime. But technology allows a were to stay a member of his pack when travelling, and there is no longer the fight for survival that had Alphas claiming and fighting over territories and pack members.

They still squabble about such things, but there are no longer physical altercations where one Alpha walks away the victor and the loser is left in a bloodied heap of fur and indignity.

When Jared and Jensen get to the hotel, the clerk signs them in with a warm smile and a delicate little sniff. In seconds, she’s ushering Jensen to one of the waiting chairs and foisting a cookie and glass of warmed milk on him, tutting and cooing and doing all manner of embarrassing things.

Jared looks mildly terrified by the display. Den mothers are in every pack, but they tend to become more prominent in their mothering when the pack is large and spread out. They’re fertile alphas who have the need to nurture the growth and bonding of the pack.

Jensen knows this. He’s studied it. He just never heard of one going outside his or her own pack before.

He offers half his cookie to Jared when his mate starts scowling, and when Jared doesn’t immediately grab the treat and shove it in his mouth, Jensen realizes that something beyond the woman’s overly friendly behavior is bothering him.

“Jare?”

“She’s treating you like pack.”

“Thanks. Kind of noticed that without your help.”

“You aren’t pack, Jensen. Not here,” Jared’s voice is possessive and a touch growly.

“Maybe she’s just being nice. You’re overreacting.”

“Which is why she’s over there upgrading our room for free to a more comfortable one.” The sarcasm that Jared speaks his words with is not appreciated by Jensen.

“So?”

“I don’t think that you understand. She’s claiming you as her own.”

Jensen very nicely does not roll his eyes at his mate. He simply pulls his shirt tails out of his pants to flash his turning scar. It’s stretched tight from his pregnancy weight gain, but its white ridges are still very clearly defined.

“I think you already did that,” Jensen reminds his husband.

“Kinky,” a smooth, mellow voice says.

Blushing, Jensen drops his shirt back down and turns to face the newcomer.

“Mr. Jameson.”

“Please, call me Sal. Mr. Jameson makes me sound old.”

Jared reaches his hand out to Sal, and Jensen can tell from the way that the other were winces that the handshake goes past friendly into downright aggressive.

“Jared!” Jensen hisses, embarrassed at the lack of manners.

Sal reclaims his hand and laughs. “First child?”

Jensen nods while keeping a disapproving eye on his mate.

“That explains it. Alphas. We’re a rather stupid lot about our children and our mates.”

Jared actually growls at that, and Jensen takes the opportunity to kick him in the ankle. Really, he’s a married man who is about to become a father. He should have better control over his instincts than that.

The fact that kicking his mate in the ankle isn’t exactly mature either? Jensen is going to ignore that in favor of righteous indignation.

“Ow,” Jared snaps as he turns wounded eyes on his mate.

Sal laughs even harder. “Newlyweds even! Been a while since I’ve seen a freshly bonded couple so far out of their territory. Would’ve expected you to be at home nesting still.”

Jared’s smile is tight on his face when he points it at the older gentleman. “Well, we had some business here that we couldn’t put off until later, especially not with the baby on its way.”

Sal nods congenially as the clerk bustles back with their new room key to their upgraded suite. The poor woman pats Jensen’s cheek again before catching a clue about Jared’s foul mood and bustling away.

“You’ll have to forgive her, she’s a bit…”

Jensen holds up a hand to keep Sal from making apologies. “Don’t worry about it, please.” He tells the older man.

Jared shoots him a withering look for it. Apparently he wanted his stupid alpha pride to be soothed, or maybe he just wanted to have some sort of justification for practically growling at a perfectly innocent den mother.

“Your mate, he smells like pack,” Sal offers gently, his eyes flicking between Jared and Jensen worriedly. Jensen feels for him. Mates might be forever, but that doesn’t keep them from having loud and vociferous fights.

The scowl on Jared’s face darkens even more at Sal’s words. “What?” he snaps.

“He smells familiar. Like our pack in a way that you do not.”

“That’s impossible. Jensen is turned,” Jared huffs.

Jensen wants to roll his eyes at his mate very, very badly, but he resists the impulse in favor of hearing Sal’s response. Despite Jared’s sudden surge of asshole behavior, he’s right. Jensen shouldn’t be bearing the scent of another pack unless he has either spent significant time with it, or he originally was born to it. Neither are true in his case.

“That is… are you certain?”

Jared gives the older man an ‘are you kidding me?’ look, and Jensen fights the urge to smile as he answers, “I was far into my twenties when I was turned and was living with our pack long before then. Had I been mistaken in my heritage, I would have shifted before being bitten.”

“Of course, I didn’t mean to insult. It is just that it will be hard to report back to the alpha that there is one in our midst who is not pack, yet smells like he is. Do you perhaps have relatives in the area? Humans that could have also been turned, but not told you?”

Jensen specifically does not look in his mate’s direction. “I have family in the area, but we aren’t exactly close.”

“Perhaps then that is why you are familiar to us. If you could give me the family names, I could look at our pack rosters. I’m certain that if one of them has turned, they would enjoy being able to talk to you without worry of censure or fear.”

“Jensen and his family are somewhat estranged,” Jared says tightly.

The word ‘estranged’ sounds worse than it actually is. It isn’t as if Jensen had some sort of falling out with them or anything. That is sort of hard to do when you don’t even remember knowing them.

Sal apparently agrees as his eyes widen at Jared’s words. Jensen is about to assure him that it isn’t what it sounds like when a strangled, “Jensen?” comes out of the man’s mouth.

“Yes?”

“As in Ackles?” Sal asks, though the look on his face says that he isn’t truly looking for clarification on that fact.

“Padalecki,” Jared corrects tersely.

“Of course, I didn’t mean… The reports said that you were using the last name of Wallace. Your reservation says, ‘ Jared and Jen Padalecki.’” Sal rambles.

“Jen?” Jensen mouths at his mate.

“I let Jeff make the reservations for us,” Jared admits. Jensen would like to say that he’s surprised by the confession, but he isn’t. Jared had sworn that he had everything arranged, but the fact of the matter was that he had never been keen on taking the trip to Texas. He had probably procrastinated until he couldn’t get it all done and had begged his brother to help get him out of his self-made predicament.

“Of course, this makes so much more sense now,” Sal continues, oblivious to their little side conversation.

“It does?” Jensen asks at the exact same time that Jared does. It’s a little creepy that they’re already to the stage where they say the same thing at the same time, but Jensen mostly blames that on having grown up with the guy.

“The Ackles family is practically a second Alpha in this area. When Jensen… when you went missing, the whole pack scented you in an effort to retrieve you. They might be human, but they are very important to many of the pack. We rely on their business and jobs to pay for our families. I expected your scent to have changed with adulthood, but laden with your wolf hormones and pregnancy, it is different enough that it isn’t instantly recognizable.”

Jensen isn’t sure how to respond to that. He knows that his biological family is influential and wealthy, but that is in the human world. Werewolves live by a slightly different standard. They don’t bandy that kind of respect around lightly.

From the look on Jared’s face, he doesn’t have any better of a grip on the situation than Jensen does.

“Look, Sal, I appreciate that you told us this, but I’d also appreciate it if you kept this quiet. With the media interest in my disappearance, I’m sure you understand the need for as much privacy as we can get.” Jensen says. He’s not above putting a hand on his stomach for emphasis on why courting any sort of recognition is a bad idea. His condition isn’t natural, and the werewolf population can ill afford to have any suspicion cast its way.

“I will, of course, do my best to keep this from prying human ears and even the ears of my pack, but I will have to report this to my Alpha.” Sal assures them.

Jared nods quickly in agreement. To not inform his Alpha would be a sign of disrespect or even one of challenge. No were would ask that of another pack member.

“If you have no other questions, I think that my husband and I would like to rest. It was a long flight.” Jared’s words are terse and a touch formal. His shoulders are hunched in a tense line, and it’s disturbing to see on him if distressingly more familiar than it was before the whole news story had broken.

Sal agrees and says his farewells, and Jensen feels suddenly drained. He isn’t sure if it is a pregnancy thing or a stress thing or something in between. All he knows is that he isn’t enjoying how complicated his life has gotten.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


	2. Chapter 2

Jared feels like a jackass. He’s guilty. He’s miserable, and even if he deserves to feel that way, he shouldn’t be displaying those emotions right now. He is supposed to be a damned alpha. He is supposedly a lawfully married man and a fully mated werewolf. His job is to be supportive of his mate.

Instead he’s seething inside. He can’t help the recriminations as they echo in his skull.

“Practically a second Alpha,” Sal had said.

What kind of humans were they that they could command the respect of a pack like that? That a pack the size of the Dallas one would be so admiring of a human family was hard to comprehend.

Added to the fact that the Ackles are wealthy and well respected in the human community as well, and Jared is left to wonder just what the hell he’s been thinking all these years. If he had spent one half the time investigating Jensen as he had fantasizing about him, he might have found Jensen’s family before that god forsaken news story had broken. If he’d been a little more interested in the well being of the man he supposedly loved and a little less in his own fear that he’s lose Jensen to another, he might have stopped to consider that Jensen could be better off regaining his humanity.

Feeling foolish has never set well with Jared. He’s not sure that many people are fond of the emotion, but he hates that now of all times he is faced to look at those facts which he has so glibly ignored for so long.

He can still remember the dour twist on his brother’s face when Jared and Jensen had finally managed to pry themselves from their mating bed and dragged their sorry asses to Sunday supper at the Padalecki home. Momma had been ecstatic and relief had been plain on his father’s face, but Jeff hadn’t been pleased.

It had irritated Jared greatly. Mating was something joyous to be celebrated, and it was offensive to him that his brother did not approve no matter how well he concealed his distaste. Jeff’s attitude had not improved over time. It had seemed like every time that Jared turned around too quickly, his brother would be sending him a disapproving look.

Finally Jared had gotten his fill of his older brother’s looks and had confronted him about it.

Jeff had only shaken his head sadly and said, “I just wish you hadn’t done it is all, Jare.”

It had hurt, and Jared had been furious, but all Jeff had said was, “You’re not old enough for him.”

That hadn’t gone over well at all. Jared had politely informed his brother that he was not some child, and weres much younger than himself already had their first child let alone their mate. For that matter four years was hardly an insurmountable age gap.

Jeff had shaken his head before speaking again. “Look, Jare, Jensen needs a partner that is his equal. He doesn’t need to be raising his mate in addition to his pups. I know you love him. I know you want what is best for him, but I also know you. You’re earnest and emotional and goodhearted, but you’re also young and impetuous and naïve. Jensen needs an equal, somebody to support him, and he isn’t going to get that with you. And you deserve to have somebody without Jensen’s issues, some sweet were that is ready to have fun for a few years before popping out pups. So yeah, I’m not exactly thrilled that the two of you decided to do this.”

Jared hadn’t spoken much to his brother after that. It had taken an intervention from their mother and a healthy dosage of Jensen’s more forgiving nature for Jared to even speak to his brother. It had helped that the entire family, including Jeff’s mate, had come down on him for his attitudes.

Of course not long after starting to speak to each other again, Jensen had finally gotten pregnant and then the news story had broken and everything had gone to hell in a hand basket. Their pointless war over whether or not Jared and Jensen should’ve mated had been put on the back burner due to the fact that everything else had suddenly gotten a lot more complicated.

The funny thing is that Jared had never once considered that his brother had a valid point. He loved Jensen and had wanted him for years. And Jensen adored him, and they were mated and sanctioned by the Alpha himself.

But now that they’re alone in Dallas about to meet the people that should have been Jensen’s family, Jared has to consider the fact that his brother might have some truth to his view. Jared doesn’t feel grown up. He feels jealous and sad and angry. He isn’t out there supporting his mate like he should. He isn’t keeping control of his own feelings so that he can bolster Jensen up.

He is constantly fighting a possessive inclination that has little to do with his werewolf nature and everything to do with him being the sort of insecure jerk that he loathes. He’s an asshole who wants Jensen all to himself.

Oh, the desire to protect Jensen and create a nesting place for their young is still there, but Jared wonders if the need to be a barrier between the world and his mate is truly just an alpha’s natural inclination, or if maybe he just isn’t as confident as he always thought himself to be.

His attitude about the Ackles family makes him question the feelings that he had when he was too young to mate. Was he really just worried that the man he considered his soul mate was going to mate to another, or was he unnaturally obsessed with Jensen?

Jared knows that either way, they’re mated now. It shouldn’t matter. What should matter is that he supports his spouse as does what is best for him. But knowing something and being able to enact it are worlds apart in terms of difficulty.

“You’re a million miles away in your thoughts.” Jensen muses from the bed where he’s resting. His face is a little pale, and his hand his rubbing at his stomach.

His scent doesn’t indicate any pain, so the rubbing is more of a soothing motion than anything else. The scent of stress has been ever present since those damned hikers found the abandoned RV in the woods and had to broadcast it to the world.

“You’re thinking about what Sal said,” Jensen says when Jared doesn’t respond immediately.

Jared opens his mouth to correct him, but in a way it is true. Sal’s words are what made him confront his own ideas about Jensen and their life. Instead of correcting, he just shrugs. “I guess that I just never thought about it, you know? You were always just pack.”

Jensen laughs and turns on his side so that he’s fully facing Jared. “I know that, Jare. The whole damned pack hasn’t thought of me as anything else for years. I think that I’m the only one who ever did think of my human family. I think the rest of you just went around thinking of me as disabled or something. Jensen and Duke: the two disabled wolves in the pack.”

“I never thought that!” Jared protests.

“Of course you did. You loved me, and you wanted to be with me, but Jared I was a horrible werewolf because I was human. I was the ugly duckling. Only instead of turning into a swan, I got bit by a duck.”

“That’s a horrible analogy,” Jared points out.

“That’s why I’m not a writer. The point is that you didn’t ever think of my parents because to you they didn’t exist as anything other than a far off notion that I didn’t hatch from an egg. To me, they were an absolute, but as out of reach as a fairy tale.”

Jared nods acceptingly even if he knows that he doesn’t deserve Jensen’s absolution.

“Jare, please. Quit with the guilt trip over there. Your face isn’t made for it,” Jensen says softly.

Jared sighs and trudges over to the bed. Sitting on the end of it, he reaches out to tug Jensen’s feet into his lap. He takes hold of one foot, rubbing at the insole, and Jensen moans in appreciation. He isn’t to the point of his pregnancy that it’s affecting his feet, but they’ve been walking through airports all day, and that is good on no man’s arches.

“I’m a horrible mate,” Jared admits.

“No, you’re just you. There’s a difference.”

“I’m selfish and young and possessive,” Jared argues.

“Tell me something I didn’t know before I went to your house to get you to knot me. We all have flaws. I’m cranky and caffeine dependant and have human-werewolf psychological issues that will probably plague us until I die. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t meant to be together. It just means we’re normal,” Jensen points out.

“I’m supposed to be making you feel better, and you’re the one helping me,” Jared complains more to himself than to Jensen.

“That’s my job, huh? Don’t take it away from me.” Jensen says with a poke of his foot to Jared’s stomach.

“But…”

Jensen sighs and pushes up into a sitting position. “Is this about that crap that your brother told you? Because you’re a great help to me, and you are supportive even when you’re being an unreasonable, dire wolf ass about things. I don’t need somebody to hold my hand through this.”

“I’m too possessive of you,” Jared corrects, like reiterating the word will make Jensen realize just how abnormal Jared’s feelings towards him are.

“I think I’m the one who gets to determine that, yeah? You aren’t telling me what to do or locking me away or trying to keep me away from my parents. We aren’t always going to agree, and as much as you can see that maybe your own feelings are getting in the way of ‘supporting’ me, I can see where you’re going to feel differently about this. It isn’t a problem unless we make it that way. It isn’t a problem until we quit trying to understand and fix things together.”

Jared feels his heart lighten a touch at the words. “You really think that?”

Jensen smiles at him fondly, the motion edging out the ever present stress lines that have taken up residence on his forehead. “My little wolf, still looking for my approval after all these years,” he says as he tucks Jared’s hair back behind his ear.

“Jerk,” Jared mumbles, his face turning red. “You haven’t called me that since I was like, four.”

“Only because Jeff threatened to beat me to a pulp if I didn’t quit babying you,” Jensen confides.

“Yeah?” Jared asks. This is news to him.

“Yeah. He was really upset with me about it. I don’t know if he thought that I thought you were a puppy or he was jealous or what, but you were damn cute back then. All chubby cheeks and fluffy furred, you had these tiny little wolf teeth that you’d nip at me with when you wanted attention.”

Jared grabs Jensen’s hand and nips at its palm. “You still think I’m cute?”

“So not the same thing. Don’t try sullying my memories,” Jensen chides, but his smile doesn’t leave his face so much as it turns naughty.

Jared grins back. “Oh, Honey, I have all night to try.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The butterflies don’t really hit until Jensen is seated. The café that they’re at is small and out of the way, but the inside of it is decorated fairly nicely. The floor has wear marks on it from customers, and Jensen can smell the way that the scent of coffee has soaked into the upholstery of the booths and chairs and the exposed wooden beams that run up the walls and cross over the ceilings.

There was a sign on the door when he and Jared arrived that said the place was closed for a private party, and he wonders just how much his parents had to pay to the owners for not only their time, but their silence. The place has to do a fair bit of trade with the business crowd. He can’t imagine them willingly giving that up.

The coffee that they have brewing is like ambrosia to his nose. Jared took one look at him before ordering two cups from the waitress when she came over. It’s more caffeine than Jensen’s doctor would like him to have, but one indulgence isn’t going to make that big of an impact with the baby. He hasn’t had any complications so far, and human women and fertile werewolves have done much worse to themselves in bygone eras and still had perfectly healthy children.

Besides all that, a good cup of coffee will probably settle his nerves more than the caffeine will inflate them.

Jared shifts next to him, and his large hand reaches out to engulf Jensen’s own. It’s still a surreal feeling. For all that he’s spent the last several years with the knowledge that Jared is and will always be larger than him, he doesn’t feel small around him until he’s being cherished.

When they fight, Jensen swears that he’s three times the size that Jared is even though he knows differently. When they fuck, it’s all about animal heat and sex. But when they make love or cuddle or even just read the morning paper together, Jared’s size becomes evident. He’s like a living shelter, as sappy as that sounds, and it makes Jensen feel secure.

That feeling is working its magic against the anxiety that is swirling around in the pit of Jensen’s stomach. He swears that he’s about to come apart at the seams from the tension of waiting.

Then the front door opens.

He’s vaguely aware that his hand his like a vice around Jared’s and that there is no need for it. He knows what his parents look like. He’s emailed them a few times, and they’ve exchanged pictures, but he hasn’t actually spoken to them.

He and his mother had a shared reticence about the idea, and even though Jared, and apparently Jensen’s older brother and father, had been baffled by it, he knew that he wanted to wait.

He didn’t want their first conversation in decades to happen over the phone. It just didn’t seem right or fitting.

That knowledge does nothing to quell the storm of emotions that are stirring in his gut. Now that the moment is actually upon him, he wonders if he made the right decision. There is a lump in his throat that isn’t going to go away, and there is the very real possibility that he’s going to relive second grade show-and-tell where he got up in front of the entire class and couldn’t talk about the stupid daisy that he’d found by the sidewalk.

And why he’s even thinking about second grade when he’s about to talk to his actual parents is beyond him. This is so much more important than some childhood trauma about a flower that he thought represented him. It should even be traumatic anyway. He got a great grade on the stuttered presentation because of his mature insight or something.

“Go get ‘em, Daisy,” Jared whispers into Jensen’s ear. It makes Jensen laugh because Jared always, always knows when he’s reliving the flower incident, and he never fails to tease Jensen about it.

The laugh attracts the attention of his parents, and all of a sudden, Jensen can’t breathe. His body feels like it’s both on fire and frozen at the same time. It is like that time that he saw Jared kiss a girl at a Christmas party. A mistletoe kiss had been all it was, but the sight had made Jensen’s gut roil. He’d been unable to look away. Jared had been beautiful and perfect, but he’d been kissing another and envy had warred with grief inside of him.

The current situation is entirely different in nature, but Jensen still feels the need to both run towards and away from the impending meeting. His mind is skipping through memories faster than he can cognitively keep up. It is like his brain is trying desperately to pull up a recollection of his parents. Like if it just searches hard enough, they’ll be there mixed in with all his memories of the pack and Jared.

Those remembrances, if they are there, are long since buried. Jensen knows this, but he still can’t keep himself from sniffing delicately to see if his mother’s scent jogs something loose.

The sniff doesn’t do anything but jar his parents into moving, closing the gap between them and meeting him halfway. They stare at each other for what seems like an eternity. His father, Jensen notices, looks older than his years, and his mother’s hair has all the signs of hair colorings. He can smell the sadness and excitement pouring off them, and he knows that all of it is in some way because of him.

“Jensen,” his mother whispers as her eyes fill with tears. He smiles back at her and pretends that the tears coming to his own eyes are the result of pregnancy hormones.

“Hi,” he whispers back just as softly. By the time the word leaves his mouth, her tears have won the battle and are rolling down her face, making a mess of her makeup.

She makes an abortive step towards him, and he sways a little in her direction, but otherwise they just stand there staring at each other. Jensen figures that she is just as uncertain as he is in what they should do next. They should know each other. This should be okay, but it isn’t.

“You look well,” she finally says.

“He looks like you,” her husband corrects under his breath, and Jensen can’t help but agree with the statement that he knows he wasn’t supposed to catch. He wouldn’t have made out the whisper of the words without his werewolf hearing, and because of that he can’t comment back on it, but he does look like his mother.

The logic centers of his brain had recognized this from the photographs that he has seen, but it is another matter entirely to be able to notice the similarities in person. If he sniffs, he can make out both of their scents, and he can tell the similarities that are there. They’re the same likenesses that he gets when he scents Jared’s parents, an almost perfect blending of the odor of mates combining together in their child.

There are only ever slight differences in biochemistry that mark each pup from its mother and father, and even though Jensen’s parents are human, his scent still mimics their own to a startling degree. He smells more like his mother than his father at the moment, but that is only because of the pregnancy pushing his normal hormone balance out of whack. Were he in another phase of his life, his smell would more closely align with his father’s.

“I don’t know what to say,” Jensen finally admits.

“Oh, my baby,” his mother starts crying in earnest then, but she turns into the comfort of her husband’s arms instead of trying to take Jensen in her own. He isn’t sure if he’s grateful for her tact or not.

She is a stranger, but she is also his mother. He’s spent enough years being jealous of other pup’s having their parent’s affection. He is loved. He knows that, but the love of his pack has never been a true replacement for the love of a parent.

“Hey,” Jared’s voice is gentle as he comes up behind them. Jensen hadn’t even heard his mate move, but he is thankful for the assistance. He can admit that he is frozen where he’s at, and while Jared is by no means detached from the situation, he can maybe at least get them to their table.

“You must be Jared,” Jensen’s father says as he holds out his hand for a shake.

And it’s weird. It’s very weird to look at another person and know that he is your father. Half of that man’s DNA is in Jensen’s bloodstream, and he can see the similarities in the way that he grabs Jared’s hand to shake it. That’s Jensen’s hand hold. That’s the way his finger’s wrap around another person’s, and it’s just odd how they can be so similar just because of some genetic material.

“I’m please to meet you, Mr. Ackles,” Jared’s voice rumbles against Jensen’s skin, and it’s only then that he realizes how much he has turned in to his mate’s side, how he has not one, but both arms around Jared’s waist, and his forehead is resting against Jared’s neck.

It’s got to look pathetic, needy even. Jensen doesn’t want to look needy. He isn’t needy. He overthrew his own alpha in a fight and is one of the toughest weres in their pack.

“Joe, please, or Joseph if you’re going to insist on formality, but Mr. Ackles makes me feel old,” Jensen’s father tells Jared pleasantly. It’s in a congenial tone that Jensen himself has used on many people when he’s doing business transactions and wants to put a customer at ease.

Jared laughs politely and gestures back at the table that he and Jensen had just been sitting at. “Would you like to sit down?”

“We’d love to,” Joe says as he reaches out to tug Jensen’s mother to his side and guide her over to the table. Her eyes keep sweeping over Jensen’s face like she’s trying to memorize it, and he gets that. Part of him thinks that it could feel creepy, but it doesn’t. She’s a mother – his mother – and she wants to see her child.

He can relate to that. In a few months, he is going to be doing the same thing to his first born. Jensen just knows that he isn’t going to want to let his pup out of his sight. His eyes are going to look just like that, memorizing every detail and asking even as they look if his baby is okay.

“They have great coffee here, Carol can’t get enough of it, can you, Honey?” Joe prompts Jensen’s mother, and she glances over at him with a look of irritation.

“Don’t patronize me,” she tells him. Then she turns to Jensen and says, “Your father is such a worry wart. He thinks I’m going to fall apart at the merest mention of anything. You should see the boxes of tissue he’s got in the car.”

“Jared’s got the hotel room freezer chocked full of ice cream,” Jensen confides in her, “but I’m not sure if that’s because he thinks I’m going to need the comfort food, or because he thinks he’s going to be hungry later.”

Jared and Joe laugh awkwardly. Jensen can tell its Jared’s fake laugh, but he’s guessing that even the waitress can tell that.

“So how long are you in town for?” Joe asks as he flags the waitress over to take their order.

“Just until Thursday,” Jensen answers. Carol looks a little upset by the information, and Jensen can’t blame her. Their meeting is horribly awkward, like a first date from the very pits of hell, but it is still weirdly one of the best days of Jensen’s life.

“Jensen couldn’t get much time off from work,” Jared interjects into the conversation.

More correctly, Jensen couldn’t afford to take much time off from work with maternity leave hanging over his head and the extra costs that having a baby is going to bring. Jensen has a lot of good will built up with the pack from all of the babysitting he’s done over the years, and he knows how to take care of even a newborn pup with all of the different families he’s lived with, but things are going to be different when their little one comes along.

“What do you do?” Joseph asks politely.

“I, uh, just got promoted to supervisor of accounts payable about a year ago,” Jensen tells his father proudly. It’s a good, solid job, but Jensen knows that he’d have a more impressive one if he didn’t live in Denton.

There are drawbacks with staying in a smaller pack community. Humans and their world offer far better job opportunities, and Jensen’s choice to stay with his pack has impacted his career. His father has to know that the job isn’t as impressive as it seems, the man is in business after all, but he doesn’t show anything other than encouragement on his face.

“Well, congratulations,” he says a hint of pride even coloring his tone.

Jensen smiles and flushes a little at the praise. It shouldn’t mean anything to him. He has many father figures and a father-in-law back in Denton, but he can’t deny that this is different.

The shy smile that he offers back is tremulous, but the joy behind it is irrationally genuine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jared isn’t sure how exactly a visit in a coffee shop turned into a family dinner. He just knows that he has a distinct lack of like for Jensen’s older brother. It might be a Jared thing. He could, possibly, be transferring his own little brother angst onto Jensen’s older brother, but he’s fairly certain that it’s an alpha thing instead.

And if there is one thing that Jared knows about his mate, it’s that Jensen will kick his ass if he pulls any ‘macho alpha bullshit’ around Jensen’s family.

That one word makes Jared want to hunch up and growl aggressively at the Ackleses. They aren’t pack. They smell like Jensen, sure, but Jared can’t trust them. His instincts tell him that they could harm his child, harm his mate.

And Michael in particular? Michael is just a touch too alpha for Jared’s taste. Where Joseph was cordial and polite and even caring, Michael’s eyes are assessing and judging. They aren’t just staring at Jensen for the sake of staring, and Jared’s got a good basis for comparison.

Their coffee meeting had been stilted and oddly silent for a three people who had decades to catch up on. They’d spent much of the time just staring and crying at each other, or in Joseph’s case, pretending not to cry.

Jared had even cried because his mate was crying, and he was just happy that Jensen’s father was apparently rich enough to keep the tabloid people away from his reunion, because Jared didn’t want photos of his snotty, tear stained face in the papers. He was not Jensen; he was not a pretty crier.

But somehow they had kept talking into lunch and then an after lunch walk that lead into Jensen having to get a chocolate fix that somehow lead into meeting his sister and brother and sister-in-law for dinner.

Jared thinks that maybe this all falls under the whole pushing things too far too fast rule, but he’s not sure what else he can do. Their window of opportunity is fairly short. Jensen’s pregnancy isn’t going to allow him to be flying out to see his relatives all the time, and they don’t need the Ackleses hanging around Denton.

But the way that Michael is eyeing Jensen? He’s got some things on his mind, and they’re the kind of things that make Jared want to puff up his hackles, growl and show his dominance. Michael is watching Jensen’s reactions, gauging his responses, and every so often, he glares at Jared like he wants to rip his throat out with his bare hands.

It’s protection. Worse, it’s possessiveness, and Jensen is not Michael’s to protect. If it was one of Jensen’s parents acting that way, Jared would give them more leeway. But this is an older brother, and while Jared has a younger sibling that he feels protective of, the vibe he’s getting from Michael Ackles is just a touch too frosty for his liking.

At least his wife is nice. If there is one thing that Jared has faith in, it is the ability of a mate to keep her significant other in line.

“You should’ve seen Mikey’s face when he saw all of the gifts on the baby registry! He didn’t know what half of the things even were. I swear he thought that I’d taken him to outer space or something,” Julia, Michael’s wife, says as their drink orders are brought out to them.

Beside him, Jensen waves away the waiter who was offering to pour him a glass of wine, asking for a refill on his iced tea instead.

“You don’t drink, Jen?” Michael asks, his annoying hyper acuity pointing out Jensen’s sobriety.

“I do,” Jensen corrects, “I’m just… watching my weight.”

Jared takes a sip of his own wine and tries not to let the lie affect him. It’s not like they have the option of telling the truth, and he supposes that it’s a normal enough question even if it is a touch rude. Besides, he’s far more annoyed with Michael’s use of ‘Jen.’

“Michael!” Julia scolds, “How rude!”

At least somebody at the table agrees with him. Jared figures that’s better than nothing.

“Honestly, Jensen, your brother learned his manners in the family stable from the pet donkey,” she whispers conspiratorially.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Michael protests.

On Jared’s left, Jessica rolls her eyes. Jensen’s little sister is hauntingly beautiful. Almost a clone of her brother only in feminine form, Jared is a little scared to even bring her picture back to the pack lest the unmated alphas decide to go after her.

Their fondness for Jensen is unrivaled, and if Jared hadn’t knotted Jensen when he did, there would have been quite a bit of vying done for Jensen’s attention. Aaron and his bullheadedness aside, the majority of the pack had been raised to respect and do things in proper order. The unmated had been waiting for Jensen to have an appropriate adjustment period to being a werewolf before they started in on their pursuit of him in earnest.

But Jess is sweet, a little quiet, and even smells like Jensen. She’s also unmated. Even with weaker human scents filling his nostrils instead of more readable werewolf ones, Jared can tell that she has no serious boyfriend or girlfriend. Her scent is her own. No other has touched her intimately for at least days, not even kisses, and Jared wouldn’t put it past his packmates to try to change that.

“Mikey always means it,” Jess corrects, “he just always gets by with it too.”

“He does,” Julia agrees merrily.

“He’s like his father,” Carol agrees solemnly even as Joe sputters next to her.

Three sets of feminine eyes land on Jensen, and Jared stiffens because all of a sudden he knows the game that’s being played. He’s seen variations of it happen with his mother and sister and sister-in-law. They’ve just never tried to rope Jensen into it.

Jensen looks a little off put for a second before shaking his head and smirking a little. He’s apparently amused at getting included in the ‘girl talk,’ probably because he can tell that Jared is uncomfortable with it, and neither of them have gotten past their need to one up the other even though they’re mated to each other.

It’s a guy thing, and Jensen loves to play chicken. He also loves to prove how secure he is in his masculinity, so it doesn’t surprise Jared in the least when Jensen lets loose with, “Well, I don’t know about the two of them, but Jared is a sweetheart.”

It’s a nice, beautiful thing to say about one’s mate. There are melting feminine gazes, and a sneaked in glare in Michael’s direction, but Jared knows better than to trust Jensen on this. Jensen loves his one liners.

“But if you’re talking baby items? Jared didn’t even know that you need to warm formula before you give it to babies. You should’ve seen him in the baby aisle at Target trying to help me decide what to put on the gift registry. He hadn’t the foggiest clue what over half of the stuff even was let alone what it was for.”

Jared sighs and plays it up a bit. He can’t deny the accusation because it’s true. He was too busy staring at Jensen taking care of the pups and daydreaming to notice all of the intricacies that came with their care. And sure, his mother probably had warmed a bottle or two for his baby sister, but he was a kid at the time. He hadn’t wanted to know anything about the care of the squawking and blind little wolf pup that his momma was toting around.

The jesting doesn’t have quite the effect that either Jared or Jensen had expected. The Ackleses are quiet for a moment. Michael looks introspective, but the rest of them are a mixture of shocked or nonplussed

“You were putting together a baby shower registry?” Carol finally asks.

Jensen looks confused for a moment and glances over at Jared for assistance.

“Yeah, we… Jensen and I, we have a surrogate,” Jared forces the lie out of his mouth. He and Jensen had just assumed that the private investigators had dug that little tidbit up. It wasn’t in the papers, but they had just guessed that it was not salacious enough to compete with the whole kidnapping story and as a result hadn’t gotten published.

“Oh, Oh! Congratulations!” Carol gushes, her face splitting into a smile. Jessica still looks shocked, and Julia is the very picture of confusion.

Joseph looks uncomfortable, but Jared doesn’t care to sort through the thousand things that could be making him feel that way because Michael is back to looking suspicious. Michael’s eyes flick up to meet Jared’s while utter chaos reigns at the table, and Jared can see the challenge in those eyes.

It hits Jared with a flash of certainty that Michael knew about the baby. There were two investigators. Mia had said as much, and she’d referred to the second as ruthless. And the second investigator worked for Michael. He and Jensen had just made the mistake of thinking that the second investigator was called off.

Jared straightens his spine and squares his shoulders. He returns Michael’s gaze evenly until the human looks away. It’s a submission, but Jared knows that it is a momentary one. He just hopes that nothing more comes of it than some awkward in-law relations.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jensen has never been so happy to see the inside of a hotel room. Things with his parents had gone well. At least, he thinks that it went well, and that has to count for something, right?

Jared locks the door behind them, and Jensen resists the urge to lean into his mate and beg for petting. He’s a grown man, and not in need of any sort of reassurance that he’s a good boy. He knows that he’s a decent person, and he knows that he’s loved. And, okay, so maybe he’s just a little bit nervous about how his family feels about him.

Writing emails is a lot different from seeing somebody face to face. Jensen knows this from basic life experience, but as a werewolf, he’s even more aware of it than he was in the past. In addition to voice inflection and body language, he can smell mood shifts if the emotion is strong enough, and if background noise is quiet enough, he can hear heartbeats change.

But interpreting all of that data is far different from being able to gather it in the first place. As much as he has spent his life studying his pack, he’s only been a were for a short period of time. If anything, he’s still just as confused and worried as he was before the meeting. Sure things didn’t go haywire, but they were so awkward and everything seemed to happen so fast that he isn’t sure that he can trust his own perceptions.

“God, I’m glad that’s over with,” Jared mutters as he slips his shirt off over his head.

“Yeah?” Jensen asks. He sounds insecure, he knows that he does.

Jared’s he perks up and tilts to the side, and he’s silent for a little bit before answering with, “You okay, Jense?”

 

Jensen shrugs and looks away. He isn’t okay, but Jared knows that, so his question doesn’t deserve a verbal answer. Confusion is rampant in Jensen’s mind, and maybe Jared saw or heard or smelled something that Jensen dismissed. Maybe his family is disappointed in him. Maybe they were disgusted by him or pitied him or…

“Hey,” Jared’s voice is soft as he pulls Jensen close to his now naked chest, “what’s going on in there?” he asks as he pressed a soft kiss to the crown of Jensen’s head

“Do you think that they liked me?”

Jared tenses for a moment, and Jensen can practically feel him warring with himself over the correct answer. “I think that they liked you more than I wanted them to,” Jared finally settles on saying.

It’s an honest response even if it irritates Jensen that Jared isn’t letting go of his possessiveness. It’ll come in time. So long as Jared doesn’t go over the line with it, Jensen is willing to let him work through his issues. Heaven knows that Jared and the pack in general gave Jensen plenty of years to mull over the turning subject.

“Carol wants to have breakfast tomorrow,” Jensen tells his mate as he opens his suitcase and starts digging for a pair of pajamas. Werewolves are supposed to run hot, but since Jensen became pregnant, he’s been seeking out the comfort of extra clothing.

It’s more than likely a psychological issue. Maybe it’s his subconscious trying to protect him and his offspring. Or it could be his brain insisting that he’s still human and needs the clothing for protection and warmth. Or it could be his human brain wanting to hide from the unnaturalness of his baby’s being.

Then again, it could just be that his pregnancy hormones are screwing around with his body temperature, and it has nothing to do with his brain.

Jensen doesn’t know. He’s had other things to be worrying about.

“Oh,” is all that Jared says in response to Jensen’s statement.

“She said that she’d like to just talk to the both of us alone without the family around,” Jensen fills in.

“Oh,” the cadence is different this time even though the word is the same. Jared sounds just slightly disapproving.

“You care to tell me what ‘oh’ means?” Jensen snaps as he pulls the hospitality tucked bedspread back from its picture perfect state so that people of actual size can crawl underneath it.

“Doesn’t that seem a little soon to you? I mean, you don’t want to push anything,” Jared offers hesitantly.

Jensen shrugs. “I guess, but it’s not like she’s going to have another opportunity very soon. We’re flying back home, and we’re planning on not keeping in so great of contact until after the baby is born. Maybe she senses that with her mom intuition or something. God knows your mom would.”

“Yeah, but she’s not really your mom,” Jared says.

Jensen just crosses his arms over his chest and glares at his mate. It might not be as intimidating as it might have once been what with the start of man boobs starting up and the baby belly down below, but he likes to think that the pose still does its job.

“I mean she is,” Jared hastily corrects, “just not. You know?”

Jensen exaggerates his disgust with an overly expressive exhale of air and climbs into the bed without saying anything.

“I’ll go. You know that I will,” Jared continues on, his earnest expression creeping onto his face.

“Oh, I know you’re going to go. That wasn’t exactly an option,” Jensen tells him.

“You’re mad at me,” Jared says in a small voice.

“Not mad,” Jensen admits as he lets his irritation go, “just frustrated. I want to go home, but I’m going to feel like I left something undone when I leave. Nothing but time is going to fix my relationships with them, and you just proved that.”

“I’m sorry,” Jared says as he hesitantly climbs in on the other side of the bed.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like you’re completely wrong. She’s never going to be my mom in the way that your mom is yours. There isn’t anything we can do to fix that, and the best we can hope for is to build some sort of friendship or mentorship or something. I know that. It just sucks.”

“Well, maybe then the question isn’t whether or not they liked you so much as whether you liked them. No point in working on a relationship out of obligation,” Jared points out.

Jensen nods and then shakes his head. “That’s the problem, Jay. I really do like them.”

He leaves off the observation that his mate doesn’t feel the same way. Some things are just better left unsaid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

There are a few things that Jensen expected when they went down to the hotel restaurant to meet his mother the next morning. Her sitting there chatting with Sal wasn’t on the list.

From what he can see, it isn’t just a pleasant conversation of a manager talking to a well to do customer. They’re literally sitting there shooting the breeze like they’ve known each other for ages.

The acoustics in the restaurant are for crap even with his werewolf hearing. He can make out the timbre of their voices, but none of the words. It’s unusual, but he figures that with the number of werewolves that must use the hotel that they needed something a little less easy to eavesdrop in. Werewolves still have business competitors and secrets that they don’t want every pack and its alpha to know about.

“Good morning,” Jensen greets his mother as he walks up to the table. Jared mumbles his own salutation, and Jensen relaxes a little with the knowledge that he at least won’t have to be scolding his mate all the way home for his bad manners.

“Jensen,” Carol says with a far sunnier smile than the one that she wore the day before, “have you met Sal?”

Jensen turns to Sal and nods at him. “Yes, actually, we met him when we first checked in,” he tells her.

“Oh, well, Sal used to be one of our very best employees. Your father had him earmarked for senior management one day. Practically begged him not to go, but Sal had promised his friend that he would take care of this hotel, and he wouldn’t be swayed. It’s the first time that I ever saw your father lose a battle of wills,” Carol trails off softly at the end, and her eyes grow a little sad. Jensen doesn’t want to know about the other battles that his father has given up on. He has the distinct feeling that they involve him.

Sal smiles at both him and Jared as he vacates from the seat at their table. “Carol is an amazing woman, but I won’t take up any more of your time with her.”

“You should call sometime, Joe would love to visit,” Carol tells Sal.

“I will,” he tells her with a less formal smile than he had given Jared and Jensen.

Carol sighs as he walks away. “He never will call, you know? When he walked away from the job, it’s like he left for a whole other world. But when you went missing he dropped everything to come and help us look for you. I didn’t even know that he had so many friends.”

Jensen doesn’t know how to answer that or even if she expects a response. He figures that the many friends that Sal brought with him were pack members, and that the reason he left his lucrative position with Jensen’s father was because of the nature of the work that Sal does. Not just any pack member would be trusted to delicately handle the comings and goings of outside werewolves going through a territory. The request was probably made by Sal’s alpha at the time.

He couldn’t exactly share that kind of insight with his mother though, so he keeps silent and moves to pull his chair out from the table.

“Maybe he feels uncomfortable,” Jared suggests as he also moves to sit down.

“What on earth for?” Carol asks.

“Well, I guess that it would be hard to turn down an offer from Mr. Ackles like that. It’s not every day that a man of that power would specifically ask you to stay, right? It’s got to be at least a little uncomfortable for Sal to go back to a guy that he turned down so blatantly,” Jared reasons.

Carol frowns a little, but nods, accepting Jared’s idea. “Joe doesn’t feel that way though. Sal was a good employee, but when he came to look for Jensen, that meant something to us. Their support through the whole ordeal… They didn’t just search for you,” she says turning to Jensen, “When we couldn’t find you, they kept supporting us through the investigations and interrogations. They didn’t turn their heads away in disgust like so many volunteers. It was like they knew that we were as innocent as we were claiming. Even when some of our own family members felt differently, they didn’t.”

“I’m glad you had them,” Jensen tells her.

“And I’m glad that you had the Wallaces,” Carol answers in return. “I know that I seem jealous of them, and I am, but I’m happy that you had somebody to love you while you grew up.”

Jensen shifts uncomfortably, but gives a gentle smile in response. He can’t exactly tell her that he isn’t all that close to the Wallaces because he was raised by a literal pack of wolves.

Carol clears her throat and shakes her head. “I actually didn’t want to have breakfast with the two of you to talk about such heavy topics. I think that yesterday was draining enough, wasn’t it?”

Jensen grunts his agreement, and his smile is more genuine. He could deal with some easier topics.

At least he thinks he can deal right up to the moment that his mother pulls out what looks like a photo album.

“When Mia called your father to let him know that she’d found you, I knew that I wanted to be able to give you something. Of course, we don’t know each other all that well, but you know you, right? So I figured that maybe you’d like a set of your baby pictures. I admit that I hired this professionally done so that the photographs copied with the best clarity that they could, but I hope you enjoy them even though I didn’t actually do all of the scrapbooking in here.”

Carol actually looks nervous as she hands the book over to Jensen like she thinks that he’ll think less of her because she didn’t paste the photos and fancy decorative pages into the album herself. He wonders if that is something that other kids do. He doesn’t remember Jared complaining about not having as fancy of a baby book as Jeff has, even though he has heard his mother-in-law bemoan that Jared’s book is the least filled of all three of her children’s books.

When Jensen cracks open the album, he’s confronted with his wrinkly, red, newborn baby face swaddled in a too large blanket with a silly little hat on his head. There are more photos that seem to consist of everybody in the world holding him as he grows progressively older page after page. It’s sweet and everything until he reaches the page where his toothless baby self is mugging for the camera, buck naked baby butt and all.

He doesn’t close the book fast enough to keep Jared from crowing, “Naked baby pictures!” and swiping the book from Jensen’s hands to rifle through the photos looking for embarrassing ones that will top the ones that Jared’s mother has of him.

Across the table, Carol starts laughing at Jared’s enthusiasm, and Jensen just wishes that the floor would swallow him whole.

All in all, it’s his most normal experience during his visit to Texas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Returning to Denton had been pure heaven as far as Jared was concerned. Sure the house was a little musty from having been shut up for a while, and there was a load of papers on his desk waiting for him when he returned, but it was nice to be home. It was nicer to be with his pack.

The photo album that Jensen’s mother had given him is sitting in the baby’s nursery next to the one that Jensen himself had picked out on a shopping trip. Jared remembers teasing his husband about it when Jensen snatched it off the clearance shelf when they were out shopping and cradled it to his chest all the way to the counter.

It had seemed so unlike Jensen at the time, but viewed through the right lens, now it makes perfect sense. Jensen doesn’t want to forget a single moment of their pup’s early childhood because of what happened to his own.

It’s sad and just a little heartbreaking to think about, so Jared does his best not to ponder it. Instead he digs into the papers sprawling across his desk and curses the fact that he’s the last rung on the ladder at work and therefor the guy stuck with all the paper pushing that nobody else wants to do.

On the plus side, all the accounting gnomes love him because he actually turns his forecasts, budgets and spending in on time with the spreadsheets filled out correctly. He’s not sure how the other managers fill theirs out wrong, but he frequently gets cookies that nobody else does, so he just accepts that he’s got hidden skills for becoming a secretary if his current illustrious job of warehouse manager doesn’t work out for him.

He’s about half way through the mountain of white formerly known as his desk when his radio goes off with a safety emergency. Seems one of the forklift drivers didn’t set his tines at the right height and managed to run into a storage shelf, spearing open entire containers of liquid that it now covering the product on the lower shelves and the warehouse floor.

Jared wants to rethink his whole ‘great being back home’ theory at that point, but he doesn’t have time because he’s got to handle the situation.

It’s messy and an annoying, and it makes for even more paperwork that has to be done immediately, so by the time that Jared is good to leave, he’s running late for Jensen’s appointment for the baby. He speeds on the way to the hospital, but even breaking traffic laws, he isn’t going to be there on time.

Jared swears that Jensen’s OBGYN is the only doctor in the world that ever runs on schedule. He has a theory that she practices some sort of werewolf moon magic that makes even deliveries happen according to her day planner.

Jensen will understand that Jared is running late. Jared knows better than to be one of those husbands who forgets to text or call his mate in the middle of an emergency, and Jensen knows better than to expect Jared to be with him at all times. And it isn’t even a big appointment. It’s just a checkup, no first times or anything that he’s missing.

That doesn’t mean that Jared is happy about coming late. He’s as much into this parenting thing as Jensen is even if he’s behind the curve of knowing about baby things and such. He hasn’t spent the last however many years babysitting pups in his spare time.

“Jared,” Jeff flags his brother down as Jared is stalking through the hallways.

“Can’t chat,” Jared tells him as he keeps walking. Honestly, he doesn’t care to talk to his brother right now, and being less late for his mate’s appointment sounds like an excellent excuse to him.

“I’ll walk with you,” Jeff says as he matches Jared’s stride.

“What is it, Jeff?” Jared snaps, a little irritated at his pushy older brother.

“You know how I’ve been working on that mating project?” Jeff asks.

Jared grinds his teeth together and nods. If Jeff is going to start bragging, Jared is so going to…

“Well one of the other researchers on it happens to be your surrogate’s doctor,” Jeff tells him.

It isn’t the sort of information that Jeff would be telling Jared or even know if not for the fact that Jared and Jensen’s surrogate isn’t pregnant, and her ‘doctor’ isn’t actually providing her any services.But the pregnancy has to look legitimate, so there are appointments and reports and whatever else it is that they do to fake a pregnancy in a woman’s hospital records.

Jared knows for a fact that Jensen’s ultrasounds are shipped to the doctor and filed in Lucy’s medical records as her own. Of course, as the surrogate parents he and Jensen are, ‘provided a copy’ of these ultrasounds so that they can see their unborn child.

“What about Lucy’s doctor?” Jared asks as he punches the button for the elevator that will take him to the correct floor.

“She mentioned that she couldn’t find Jensen’s latest ultrasound pictures, so she called over here to see if I knew who she could contact about that because Mandy was out last week with the flu. But then she called back about an hour later and told me that she must’ve just been blind because they were right in the folder.”

Jared looks over at his older brother, but as hard as he tries, he can’t see that Jeff is just trying to share what he thinks is a humorous anecdote with his little brother. Jeff looks concerned, and Jared does not like the implications of that.

“You don’t sound like you think that she needs to have her glasses prescription checked,” Jared says.

“I’m just saying that I’ve worked with her, and she doesn’t seem the type to miss those so easily. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but…”

“But we need to watch ourselves,” Jared finishes for him.

“I already talked to Mandy about it. We’re going to have to find a different way of getting the baby’s updates over there. Maybe mail them in a tin of cookies or something,” Jeff suggests.

The elevator door slides open, and Jared enters, thinking he mumbles his thanks as he punches the button to the floor that he needs.

“We’ve got your back, Jay,” Jeff tells him as the doors swish shut.

Jared knows that. He just worries more about who is after it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jensen smiles to himself as he gets dressed back in his ‘normal human’ clothes. Seeing his little one on the monitor never gets old, and he’s somewhat irrationally happy that he has to get more frequent ultrasounds than most expectant mothers do.

Males have a higher risk of miscarriage, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Their bodies aren’t quite right for it even when they’re born as fertile males instead of being changed.

In the old days, if Jensen had been alive and pregnant, he would have had to shift to give birth to his child. Shift as in continuously changing form and pushing his child out along a birth canal that didn’t exist until the pup’s body started to come out through skin that just shifted around it until it was through.

The old reports referred to the process as excruciating, and Jensen doesn’t feel the need to experience it to find out for himself. No fertile male that Jensen knows has ever decided to find out for himself. Their existence isn’t strictly normal, so looking for a ‘normal’ childbirth experience just seems silly to him.

Plus – the pain – Jensen isn’t a big fan of that word, and after getting turned, he really doesn’t want to be subjected to another first hand instance of his body feeling like its turning itself inside out, bones and all.

He knows that Jared’s going to be kicking himself for missing their latest appointment, but it’s the first one that he has missed, and it isn’t like it was anything that was predictable.

Jared makes less than Jensen does at the moment. Sure, Jensen’s got a nice office job that probably means that Jared will one day make more than him, but Jared is also younger. He has fewer years of experience and much fewer years of seniority than his coworkers do. He’s still in that proving himself stage that Jensen hasn’t been in for years.

Just because they’re a pack, that doesn’t mean that businesses and the like operate completely differently from the human world. There are still good employees and bad employees and the occasional bout of favoritism. About the only thing that doesn’t happen are office affairs. After all, it’s very difficult to screw around with the new secretary when you’re already mated to the first one that crossed your path.

Giving his baby bump a gentle pat, Jensen grabs his phone and sends Jared a quick text message to let him know that he’s done with his appointment already, but that he’s still hungry and willing to allow his mate to provide him and their unborn offspring with sustenance. Then he texts his mother back to let her know that yes, he received the baby blanket swatches and he agrees that the green is lovely, but he truly doesn’t need her to buy the baby something so expensive.

He already knows it’s a losing battle because he had the exact same fight with Jared’s mother over the drapes for the nursery, but it’s a fight that he doesn’t mind having because it means that he’s got people who care about him and the baby. And that is the best feeling in the world.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Duke has always been a bit of a calming influence on Jensen. Whenever he used to start feeling sorry for himself, the lone human orphan in a pack of happy werewolves, Jensen would go to see the poor, stuck werewolf as a reminder of how good Jensen truly had it. That tradition had morphed over the years into Jensen smuggling Duke Thanksgiving leftovers from whatever home he’d stayed at for the holiday that year.

The Alpha always makes certain that Duke is properly fed on the holidays and gets either a book or a rawhide depending on whether or not Duke is in his right mind at the moment, but Jensen has always figured that Thanksgiving leftovers are as traditional as the feast on the day itself. It isn’t like Duke has the ability to get up at God forsaken hours of the morning to go Christmas shopping for the relatives that he either doesn’t have or doesn’t remember having or who left him in his wretchedly turned state.

In any case, seeing Duke is sort of a thing for Jensen. Even though being mated and pregnant has taken away from the spare time that he used to spend on talking to Duke or babysitting other people’s pups, he still tries to make time for those activities. They weren’t just things that he did to make himself feel better or pass the time. Even if they had started out that way, those actions have long since morphed into interactions that he wants to continue having for the joy that they bring him.

It’s also a plus because Jared has been fielding calls from Jensen’s family all morning. They’re wealthy, so it’s not like they can’t afford retail on everything that they buy, but their family tradition seems to be buying gifts on Black Friday. But, of course, they don’t exactly know what to buy Jensen, and as Jensen just happened to send them Jared’s cellphone number, they’ve been calling him and asking his opinion about things.

It’s adorable because Jared has had problems buying Jensen gifts ever since they both grew out of their boyhood where the latest game or toy suddenly became less appealing.

“I don’t even know what that is,” Jensen hears Jared whine from the car as he makes his way over to Duke’s current abode choice of an old dog house that is located next to the fire hall. When he’s in his right mind, Duke seems to have a fondness for irony and likes to play either fire dog or police dog. One time Jensen found him curled up in a purloined duffle bag with an also purloined pink shirt on his huge body with a tabloid that had a picture of a trashy Hollywood starlet and her silly fru-fru dog all dressed up in some garish outfit emblazoned across the front of it.

If the wolf grin that Jensen had gotten was anything to go by, Duke had thought that it was hilarious.

“Duke, man, come and get it,” Jensen calls as he approaches the dog house.

Duke drags himself out of the dog house and growls irritably at Jensen. Mentally Jensen checks off pouring the big guy water and giving him coffee instead. There is intelligence in the were’s eyes today, and he doesn’t sound like he’s in the mood to have good doggy talk barked at him.

“Mama Padalecki’s turkey this year,” Jensen tells him as he awkwardly gets down on the ground next to Duke, his ever growing belly impacting his usual athleticism

Duke sneezes and looks at Jensen with sad wolf eyes.

“I know man, but they’re the in-laws now, you know? I can’t exactly go somewhere else and avoid my mother-in-law’s dry turkey. I think she’s making ham for Christmas though, and you know she makes a good ham,” Jensen consoles.

Duke huffs out a wolf breath that Jensen interprets to mean that he thinks that anybody can make a good ham. It’s all in the cut of meat.

Jensen is tempted to agree with Duke on that.

“Don’t worry, I loaded up on stuffing and mashed potatoes too,” Jensen says as he starts plopping the reheated food into the metal dog bowl he’s brought with.

When Jensen started this, he’d thought that maybe Duke would be insulted by the metal bowls. But Duke has never shown any sign that he feels bad about them or their necessity. He seems to know that his wolf side tends to not be as careful with things like dishes. Jensen’s seen him take off with many a dish as a play toy. Plastic dishes come back mangled with teeth marks, and Duke breaks even tempered glass ones with his enthusiasm.

Metal at least survives if Duke the wolf is feeling spunky.

“Hey,” Jared says as he approaches, his feet crunching in the recently fallen snow.

“What am I getting for Christmas?” Jensen asks as he turns his head up to look at his mate.

“Now, now Jensen Padalecki, what kind of boy would that make me if I told you?” Jared teases as he settles down on the ground next to Jensen.

“A naughty one?” Jensen plays along with a dirty smile.

Duke groans over his bowl where he has carefully nosed together his cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes into a pinkish colored, lumpy goo. The groan is clearly not one of fullness, not with the disgusted look he’s giving both of them.

“Hey, I’m a newlywed,” Jared protests.

Duke goes back to eating his food, and Jensen gives his husband a shove on the shoulder.

“It’s cold out here,” Jared comments after a moment of silence.

“I’m fine, Jared,” Jensen replies automatically. Jared’s paranoia about the baby is growing to epic proportions lately. Ever since they came back from Texas, Jared’s been super concerned about the pup.

He’s even got Jeff on the crazy train with him, and it’s driving Jensen up the wall. He wanted the two of them to reconcile, he just had hoped it wouldn’t be over their inherent need to, to build an entire fortress around Jensen to keep him safe. Jeff still looks uncomfortable with the both of them being together, but his reticence with that has been surpassed by his crazy need to protect Jensen and his nephew from the boogeyman. The whole thing is getting a little old.

“I’m just saying…”

“Leave it, Jay,” Jensen snaps.

Jared lapses into silence, but before long his mammoth paw is sliding nonchalantly over to grasp Jensen’s hand.

Their gloved fingers tangle together, and Jensen does his best to keep a stern expression on his face, but he knows that he’s failing miserably.

“You realize that we’re going to have to send them something back?” Jared asks after a moment.

“I was kind of thinking fruit basket,” Jensen admits.

“Yeah, no. I don’t think so,” Jared replies.

“That expensive?” Jensen asks. They don’t have the money to keep up with his family, and he doesn’t think that they would expect it, but there are still certain gift giving rules. You don’t give fruit if you’re getting something way more personal.

Jared, the jerk, doesn’t answer his question. “I’m thinking maybe coffee basket? From the coffee shop? Like the deluxe package?”

“The one you’ve gotten me every year since I started college?”

“Yeah well, your caffeine dependence is obviously genetic, and if we give it to your mother it’s really like giving a gift to your father as well. Trust me on that,” Jared tells him.

“Just for that, I’m going to withhold sex.”

“For how long?” Jared asks.

“For as long as I’m pissed with you,” Jensen answers him. “What about Jess and Michael?”

“I’m thinking one of those hand knit scarves and hat sets that Mrs. Belton makes for Jess. She really likes the snuggly feeling, you know? I don’t know why given that she lives in Texas, and it’s so damned hot down there, but I figure it’s something different,” Jared says.

Jensen gives his hand a squeeze. Jess doesn’t talk to him much still. She’s always almost shy and awkward when she does try to communicate with him, even though email. But she talks to Jared at least twice a week. At first, Jared was a little nonplussed by it, but Jensen had encouraged it. He didn’t have any reason to be worried about Jared’s faithfulness, and even if Jess had some sort of crush on her brother-in-law, Jensen doubted it meant anything.

Besides, he certainly had no business pointing fingers about crushing on Jared Padalecki when he shouldn’t have been. Humans and werewolves don’t mate unless the human turns, and Jensen had been very slow on the whole turning thing.

But Jess and Jared had developed a sort of camaraderie. Jared felt uncomfortable with the Ackleses, and Jess felt uncomfortable with Jensen, so they wallowed in their mutual discomfort. Jared, of course, doesn’t quite care for Jensen’s interpretation of his relationship with his sister-in-law, but Jensen’s ginormously pregnant with Jared’s oversized spawn. He can say what he wants.

“What about Michael and Julia?” Jensen asks carefully. As he could have predicted, Jared tenses up at the mention of Michael’s name.

“I was thinking something for the baby,” Jared answers with a flat tone. Jensen doesn’t push the issue. It’s an answer, and he doesn’t know what Jared’s deep dislike of Michael is based upon no matter how often Jared explains it.

It’s some alpha instinct, and Jensen has just given up on either understanding it or arguing Jared out of it. Normally Jared likes when other people are protective of his Jensen. He has grown a slight appreciation for Jensen’s parents even if he still bristles at the thought of them having any claim on Jensen. But Michael is out of the realm of mere discussion, and Jensen can respect that for the time being.

He can’t expect Jared to just like Michael because he is related by blood, and there are some things that only time will be able to change. Jensen knows how to be patient.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The email on Jared’s computer mocks him with its cheeriness. Carol Ackles has discovered the wonders of html, and her email is full of very Christmassy graphics and colors and fonts. Jared is half tempted to blame some assistant, but Carol seems to be the type of rich lady that takes pride in doing garish things for herself.

At first, Jared had thought that he misread her email. He was, after all, just a touch sleep deprived. His mate had kept the both of them up all night. Jensen is huge. There isn’t another way of putting it. He’s a big guy, and Jared is a big guy, and together their genes are making a very big baby who is taking his increasing lack of space out on Jensen’s insides.

Their calendar in the kitchen has a countdown to Jensen’s cesarean date in January, and the only thing keeping Jared from being crabby is seeing how miserable his mate feels. Jensen has another month to go, but the pregnancy isn’t being very kind to him. He doesn’t need to shoulder Jared’s discomfort as well as his own.

As far as Jared understands it, the last part of any pregnancy is uncomfortable, but male werewolves feel it more than their female counterparts. Females are born to have their organs shift out of the way and their spines give way to baby weight. Jensen’s changed body has that same capability, but he also has muscles and bone structure that fights those changes as well.

They’re lucky that they don’t have some of the other problems that male carriers have, so Jensen usually plasters on a happy grin about the whole thing. It irks Jared because there isn’t anything that he can do to ease his mate’s burden, and as an alpha this grates on his nerves.

But now he has another problem, because Carol is suggesting that she and Joe and Jess come up to see them for the holidays. Not actual Christmas, no, because she feels that would be too intrusive with their ‘established families’ and too stressful. But she knows how busy they are and how they can’t take time off, and she’s looked into the ‘charming’ local hotel and sees that they have rooms open that they could stay in, and what does he think about the weeks before or after New Year’s?

The problem with being pack creatures is that most everyone is already home for the holidays, and those who come visiting stay with their families. The ‘charming’ local hotel almost always has vacancies, and Jared has the distinct feeling that it would be suspicious if they all of a sudden didn’t. He also knows that there is a human town within driving distance that has a couple of hotels, and he’s willing to bet that they also have vacancies or vacancies for the right price.

And sure, Carol is clearing it with him first, but that just makes him feel worse because that means that she knows that Jared is the showstopper. Jensen is going to say ‘yes.’ Even though he’s hugely pregnant, and he’s got very obvious weight gain, and it’s just a plain bad idea; Jensen is going to say ‘yes.’

It’s Jared who can put the monkey wrench in the plans, and it’s Jared who knows that he won’t.

In his mind’s eye he can still see the worn and floppy stuffed bunny rabbit that Jensen had pulled out of the small package that his mother had sent him separately from all of the other Christmas gifts she had mailed. It was old and worn, but if Jared sniffed hard enough, there was still the slightest hint of baby Jensen on the little, abused animal.

Jensen had looked like he was about to cry when he’d held it close to him, and he’d actually growled at Jared when he had dared to reach a hand towards it. Floppy Bunny was Jensen’s and Jensen’s alone. It sits on the highest shelf in the baby’s room, but Jared knows that Jensen takes it down often to hold it because it is always in a slightly different position when he peeks into the nursery.

Jensen likes to sit in the room and dream or plot or whatever it is he does about their soon-to-be first born’s future, and Jared knows that Jensen’s biological family happens to be part of that dream. It’s going to be difficult to finagle their way around the very human elephant in the room, but Jared knows that he’ll do his best for Jensen.

He emails Carol back to let her know that the first week in January will do just fine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Strapping gel pads all over his belly makes Jensen feel like an idiot. It shouldn’t. It makes sense to do it, but that doesn’t get rid of the sensation of being a moron that the act conjures up inside of him. Whenever he has seen commercials bragging about how certain gel padded bras made some woman’s cleavage look and feel natural under some shirt, he’s only ever mocked the announcer.

What woman is going to let some random dude fondle her boobs? More than that, if a woman is letting a guy fondle her bosoms through her shirt, that means that there is a good chance she was going to let him fondle them without the shirt, right? What guy wouldn’t notice that there was some false advertising going on then?

The whole marketing concept has always been ludicrous to Jensen, but now that his parents and sister are coming to visit, Jensen is all for all the ‘natural feeling’ silicone in the world. Sure it makes him look even fatter, but there is sudden weight gain fat and then there is suspiciously solid fat.

Jensen doesn’t care how out of the realm of possibility a pregnant dude is for the human mind. There is no way that his family will feel his solid, pregnant belly and not know that there is something medically wrong with him that is definitely not attributable to excess Christmas cookie consumption. The shee amount of weight gain alone is going to worry at least his mother.

The only good thing is that he probably doesn’t need to worry about his chest looking hard and manly and is going to be spared the indignity of putting the silicone padding on his chest. Pregnancy hormones are not doing his formerly perfect pecs any favors. As much as he swore that he wasn’t going to be ‘one of those carriers,’ Jensen has caught himself worrying more than once that Jared isn’t going to find him attractive anymore.

Sure werewolves mate for life, but Jensen is finding out that security does nothing for one’s fears except make them more creative. He doesn’t know for certain that Jared isn’t imagining somebody else when they have sex. Jared’s body is there, has to be if he wants to copulate with anybody other than himself, but that doesn’t mean that Jared’s mind has to be there while he’s being intimate with Jensen.

And Jensen knows that his mate enjoyed the sight of his pregnant body back when Jensen started to show. But that was back when it was a pleasant, sweet looking bump as opposed to the giant swell of flesh that it has morphed into lately.

“How’s it going?” Jared asks as he comes into the room.

“I look like an idiot,” Jensen answers him.

“You don’t even have all the pads on yet, I’m sure that once they’re on, it’ll look better,” Jared encourages with his stupid smile.

“I’m not talking about the pads,” Jensen pouts in a teenage way that he never even used when he was a teenager.

“Jensen,” Jared actually coos as he comes over to wrap his arms around Jensen’s waist. He’s a gigantic mutant, so they still fit, but Jensen knows that any other man wouldn’t be able to achieve that feat at the moment.

“You’re beautiful,” Jared tells him, ignorant of Jensen’s not so lovely thoughts towards both of their bodies.

“Don’t lie, Jared,” Jensen grouses, unwilling to let go of his bad mood. If he lets up on that, he’s going to have to let the fear and excitement of seeing his parents again worm its way into his emotional spectrum, and he isn’t quite ready to face that.

“Hey,” Jared says as he turns Jensen around in his arms, “you have always been the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid eyes on. You’re handsome and strong and able to whup my ass even though you’re a real shorty.”

Jensen snorts in laughter and give his mate a shove. “Just you wait until Junior here isn’t weighing me down so much. I’ll get you for that short comment.”

“Made you feel better, didn’t it?” Jared points out with a smile.

“Way to point out that you’re manipulating me,” Jensen says with a little grin as he goes back to strategically placing the gel pads on his stomach.

“You think this is going to work?” Jared asks.

“Well, it’s a little late now to be backing out,” Jensen points out. “Besides, what’s the worst that can happen? They’re going to think that I have an eating disorder. I wouldn’t be the first person to have one.”

“You realize that’s kind of sad, right? I mean we’re sitting around almost hoping that your parents don’t realize you’re pregnant and think that you’ve got issues instead.”

“Jared, I do have issues. Mountains worth of them, I’m not lying exactly, just… misleading,” Jensen reasons.

Jared laughs and shakes his head, shaggy mane flipping adorably in that stupid way of his. Jensen is distracted for a moment by the sight, and ends up looking away with a blush on his face. It isn’t that he got caught staring. He’s a guy, he likes to look, and he’s never had a problem with that.

It’s actually the distracted part that bothers him. He’s been forgetful as of late, a result of being overly tired because he can’t get enough sleep at night, and it bothers him that he’s in that state. Distractedness isn’t one of his normal problems, and he hates that his pregnancy is making him that way.

Plenty of mothers and his own doctor have assured him that it’s normal. Overly tired people forget things or say silly, nonsensical things because they aren’t firing on all cylinders.

But Jensen hates forgetting anything at all. His entire childhood was spent working on his observational skills, and when he was old enough, he spent more time than was strictly healthy reading books on how to improve his memory for all those details that he kept noticing.

Jensen didn’t just memorize his part in the school play, he memorized everybody’s parts. That was just who he was, and that is just still who he is. It’s a reaction to the memories he lost, and he knows it. He just doesn’t see that he should change that aspect of himself.

“Hey,” Jared says softly, “you stressing out over there?”

“What was your clue?” Jensen snaps as he slaps another patch over his belly. He reaches for the next strip and…

“Motherfuckingsonofabitch!”

“Jense?” Jared’s voice is wary. Jensen doesn’t blame him.

“Your son gave me a fucking stretch mark with less than a fucking month to go! GODDAMNED GINORMOUS PADALECKI GENES!”

“Okay, I’m just… I’m just going to go tuck my tail between my legs and run. I’ll bring home supper,” Jared says as he bolts from the room.

Jensen throws a boot after him just because it makes him feel better. “You’d better bring home some fucking butter brickle this time! No more of that namby pamby vanilla bean crap!”

The thing about no sleep? It also makes Jensen terribly cranky.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are certain things about living in a town full of werewolves that a guy gets used to, and one of them is everybody knowing your business. The same could be said of human small towns. Denton is a small werewolf town, so Jensen has lived a good portion of his life with the knowledge that he doesn’t have much privacy.

It’s weird then to experience his family trying to give him space. Even in college he had roomed with Jeff, and the dorms had pretty much packed all the students in on top of each other. Nobody had breathing room, and it was so familiar that Jensen didn’t think much about expanding and exploring the whole privacy thing.

Why would he have done it? His only temptation to leave had been finding his human family, and his biggest temptation to stay had been Jared. And the Jared torch was just bigger and brighter than the mysteriously missing family one.

But now that Jensen is back being immersed in human culture via his biological family, he’s starting to grasp the concept of how odd the pack actually is. They aren’t a part of human society the way that other packs are. They’re a small town populated exclusively with werewolves. They interact with neighboring towns, but Denton is large enough to be fairly self-sufficient and even those weres that travel out of town for work don’t go away for longer than it takes them to complete their shift and return back to pack grounds.

They’re immersed in being werewolves, and the whole damned town has had a hand in raising Jensen. Sure they all knew that Jensen had gone to see his biological relatives. They’d all had a good sniff at him when he’d returned, and he’d been thoroughly nagged by all of his adoptive families for details.

Now that they have an opportunity to see those relatives for themselves, the pack isn’t letting moss grow under their paws. Jensen feels like he should’ve predicted the sheer chaos going on around the town’s hotel. Certainly the hotel owner did because Jensen has never seen so many waiters on staff for the lunch hour in the hotel restaurant, especially not on a Thursday.

Jensen wouldn’t put it past some of his neighbors to have booked rooms in the hotel just to try to get some information on the Ackleses.

“How much you want to bet that Mrs. Belton has the room next to your parents?” Jared whispers into his ear.

Four other weres smirk at Jared’s joke, so Jensen does the rightful mate thing and elbows Jared to keep his pride levels down.

“Your third trimester is not agreeing with you,” Jared grouses as the hostess starts to lead them back to the table where Jensen’s parents and sister are sitting.

The meeting isn’t any more comfortable than their first one was. The shocked stares of his relatives have a good sized contribution to this, but there is still all the residual hurt and uncertainty that filled their first visit together.

“Jensen, you look… well,” his mother lies as she rises from the table. She goes to hug him at the same time that Jensen reaches out to take her hand, and they end up in a sort of sideways clench that does nothing but make them both look stupid.

Jensen manages to keep his baby bump away from her though. He doesn’t want to test out the believability of his fake boob baby bump covers unless he absolutely has to. Jess and Joe both stretch out their hands, and Jensen can practically feel Jared’s stance ease in relief at their more sedate greetings.

The conversation at the table is a bit stilted. The Ackleses possess better manners than to point out Jensen’s very obvious weight gain, but he knows that it will come up eventually. He’s betting on the concern getting funneled through Jared.

“How was your flight?” Jensen asks as he takes a polite sip of milk from his glass. His pup has decided that heartburn should be something his mother experiences often, so he gets it from almost anything he eats or drinks up to and including water. At least if Jensen drinks milk, the acid gets mitigated a bit.

“It was good,” Jess offers hesitantly, glancing at Jared more than Jensen.

He isn’t sure whether she’s seeking comfort from his familiarity or trying to check him out. In his current mood, Jensen isn’t going to be amused by the second option, but his current mood is atrocious. It isn’t really anybody’s fault, and he’s going to try to make a concerted effort to not lose his temper over things that normally wouldn’t bother him.

“We stopped at this lovely little breakfast place on our way here this morning. Our waiter, Aaron I believe his name was? He said he knew you,” Carol says with a warm, worried smile in Jensen’s direction.

“He talked Jess’s ear off,” Joe joins in with a laugh.

Jensen’s thankful for his father’s add on, it helps to mask Jared’s growl – at least from the humans. The surrounding tables all heard it just fine if the way that their conversations died down is any indication. He forgives his mate for the growl though. It isn’t that Jensen’s internal reaction is any more favorable, he just masks it better.

“Oh,” Jensen asks with a calm, indifference that he doesn’t possess, “what did he say?”

Jess flushes and looks at her mother and father in an almost guilty manner before darting her eyes back to Jensen. “Just that you guys used to hang out together a lot before you got married.”

Jared snorts at that one, and this time there isn’t any chatter in the restaurant to cover it.

“I wouldn’t say a lot,” Jensen says tightly. It isn’t their fault that they don’t know what a slimy bastard Aaron Davis is, but lunch isn’t exactly the time to delicately explain Aaron’s attempt to break into Jensen’s house.

In all honesty, Jensen had thought that he would never have to address the subject with his parents or sister. It isn’t the kind of thing that fits into human society. Heats and courting behaviors both aggressive and nonaggressive are just different in a werewolf society.

The most accurate lie that he can come up with is that Aaron tried to take advantage of him while he was drunk, but that isn’t quite right any more than any other answer would be. And there just isn’t a delicate way of having the Aaron Davis conversation in the middle of the day at lunchtime. It’s either going to make Jensen look like he was almost raped or Jared look like a Neanderthal or the pack look like a bunch of redneck hicks or…

There are just a lot of ways that the Aaron conversation could go bad.

Joe shifts uncomfortably in his chair, and Jess shoots a look in Jared’s direction that Jensen can’t interpret. Jensen’s mother smiles at everybody and says, “Well, I know that you two boys have work, so I was hoping that maybe you could tell us some places to go see in the area.”

If she was anybody else, Jensen would be recommending the woods. It isn’t full moon, so there is a small chance of any of them seeing the pack roving around in their other state. But it’s cold out, and the forest floor might be beautiful, but it’s covered in feet worth of snow.

Add to that the fact that Jensen assumes that his mother isn’t going to have fond memories of her middle child being found out in the middle of that forest, and Jensen thinks he can safely eliminate a January nature hike from his recommended activities list.

“Well,” Jared says slowly, “we have a really nice quilting and heritage museum.”

It’s a complete lie. Jared is bored senseless every time that Jensen drags him to that museum. He can’t comprehend Jensen’s desire to learn more about the pack and Denton’s foundations and roots.

“Oh? That sounds nice,” Carol says with more enthusiasm than Jensen really expected her to have.

He wonders if she’ll still have it when they’re done visiting. The museum is nice but it’s a little vague on a lot of subjects. The presentations are human friendly. They pass inspection, but they can be confusing without the oral tour guide telling you all about the werewolf history and migration that caused Denton to be built, and how the suffering of the pack was sewn into the very fabric of their lives by the quilting that the old den mothers did.

Aside from the museum, there isn’t a lot to do in Denton except for try each and every one of its restaurants and its coffee shop. It’s a smaller town with a few large business, but most people go out of the city limits when they’re looking to do something exciting.

“So,” Joe says after another moment of silence descends on the table, “Jensen, your mother and I were talking.”

“Dad,” Jess whines in a disapproving tone.

“Hush, Jess, you’re too old for that,” her father reprimands her. “As I was saying, if it isn’t too soon, Carol and I would like to talk to your… parents.”

Jensen stares at him blankly for a moment before it actually clicks in his brain that they’re talking about the Wallaces.

“I… we… We aren’t that close,” Jensen decides to tell them honestly.

He can hear the titter of conversation start back up gain around them, and he can just imagine that he actually is going to get a call from the Wallaces later on. It isn’t that they wouldn’t volunteer to meet the Ackleses, but they aren’t that big of an influence on Jensen’s life. They look good on paper, but he isn’t going to end up in their will when they pass on. He didn’t spend that much time with them.

Joe looks a little angry at that, and Jess’s eyes cut subtly in Jared’s direction and back. It’s fairly obvious that they’re all thinking that it’s the gay thing, and Jensen feels bad about that because the Wallaces are nice people. They always treated him well when it was their turn to foster the pack’s human pup, and they’ve already had to go through enough with the media circus that happened when Jensen was first found.

But the explanation of how he was their foster kid for as many years as it says he was on paper, yet they still aren’t close is one that Jensen is going to avoid having. No matter what he tells his parents, they’re going to think something bad about the Wallaces. At best they’re going to sound like uncaring, money driven foster care providers.

At worst they’re going to sound like homophobic abusers.

Jensen isn’t fond of either scenario, and to top things off, Jared’s spawn decides that it is a great time to start trying to stretch Jensen’s already mushed up insides to accommodate his no doubt father following baby frame. Jensen tries to hide his wince as his pup decides to wreak havoc on his daddy’s bladder, but he doesn’t think that he quite succeeds.

This whole family meeting might not have been the best of ideas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


	3. Chapter 3

The problem with being a newlywed couple expecting their first child is that any opportunity to make some extra cash by picking up a shift or working some overtime is an immediate given. Jensen’s job doesn’t pay him extra for long hours, and he doesn’t have the opportunity to pick up extra shifts. It’s just the nature of the beast.

But the warehouse that Jared manages is a twenty-four hour operation, and he gets extra pay for covering shifts. When volunteers were asked for, Jared had been all over that. Jensen approved of the choice at the time and still approves now. It’s just weird going to see his family without Jared alongside him.

He is both looking forward to and dreading the experience. Interaction with them without Jared there is bound to be different. Jensen isn’t going to have that safety net of his mate being there to lean on and support him. Jared isn’t going to be present to run interference or step in to help Jensen with his lies.

But not having Jared there is also going to open up some different avenues of communication. Couples are different from individuals. They come with their own set of societally acceptable interactions, and it’ll be nice to have the discussions be a little more focused. There are things that you just don’t say around a spouse for fear of insulting them. Jensen knows this because he’s done it towards the mates in the pack often enough himself.

So he’s caught between being excited and being terrified. It’s like that first time that he rode a bike without the training wheels. He feels free and frightened and just the tiniest but guilty for feeling that way.

As it turns out, he should’ve paid more attention to the foreboding in the pit of his stomach that simmered under the fear and anticipation. It’s been there for what feels like forever, but it isn’t something that he ever paid a lot of attention to because he sort of figured that he knew what it was. His family being in Denton was rife with potential for them realizing that there was something weird about Jensen’s weight gain or just weird about the town in general.

There are just general inconsistencies in the way that the pack operates that ever so slightly differ from human norms. They aren’t obvious on the surface, but Jensen knows that more than one human tourist has been through town and noticed the distinct lack of dogs in people’s yards and the oddity of so small a town having so many butcher shops. Even better, a town with so many butcher shops selling smoked rinds and flavored rawhides when there isn’t a poodle or schnauzer in sight.

Jensen made Jared hide the rawhides behind the potatoes in their pantry. As far as he’s concerned, they’re disgusting and vile, but whenever full moon comes around, Jared wants to shift, and then he wants to chew. And Jensen loves him, so he always gives in to Jared’s pitiful, longing stares when they’re out grocery shopping even though he knows that Jared’s argument about oral hygiene are completely bogus. Jensen’s gums are in just as good of shape as Jared’s because he knows how to use his human toothbrush in his human form.

But it isn’t the unbalanced meat eating going on in Denton that gets brought up during desert, and by that point, Jensen hadn’t really expected it to be. The Ackleses, in particular Jess, had been acting strangely for the past few days. Jensen had assumed that they wanted to talk with them about something, and in that vein he was wrong.

What they wanted was to talk to Jensen without Jared there.

Now Jared might be an alpha in the pack, but Jensen is his mate, and that makes him an alpha too in terms of power. Just because he rolls over for Jared and cuts his mate oodles of slack because he’s stupidly in love with the gigantic freak doesn’t mean that Jensen feels that way towards everybody. He’s been raised to be a pack animal, and his first desire is to keep infighting and dissention to a minimum because it just isn’t good for the social group as a whole.

That doesn’t mean that he isn’t fully capable of getting lit pissed, snarling mad.

It seems that one Mr. Aaron Davis has been coming around to talk to Jensen’s parents and sister while Jensen’s been at work. He’s gotten close to Jess in the short span of four days. Close enough to spin his tale of woe about how Jared poisoned Jensen against him. How Jared is an abusive asshole whose family had always been a little too invested in Jensen since they had found him in the forest.

He says that Jensen is clearly miserable what with his massive weight gain that Jared apparently has been encouraging with his manipulative and controlling ways. Jensen has turned to binge eating to work through his issues, and Aaron knows that Jared has poisoned Jensen against him now, but he’s hoping that Jensen will listen to his biological family.

At first, Jensen doesn’t know what to say to them. The record player that is his brain just keeps hitting on the same song track of, “Why?” over and over again. Aaron is only feeding them this garbage out of spite. Jensen knows him, grew up with him, but they were never all that close. Aaron just always had some weird rivalry with Jared. Jensen hadn’t been happy with his attempts to break in and heat-woo Jensen, but he had assumed that after Jared’s whupping and Aaron’s subsequent demotion in pack status from the Alpha that the werewolf had learned his lesson about taking after Jared.

But then Jensen’s mind finally skips forward into outrage because his family knows Jared, or at least they know him better than they know fucking Aaron Davis. No, they don’t know Jared well, and Jensen, if he looks at things logically, can understand their concern. Jensen isn’t close to the Wallaces, the people that supposedly raised him, people who gave him their last name, but he is very close to his in-laws. He went to school with their eldest and married their middle child and spends most of his time with them.

He’s gained an inordinate amount of weight in a short time period while his husband remains svelt and muscular. Jared also has a tendency to be very tactile and sometimes those touches are the possessive ones of a mate scent marking what is his.

Jensen can comprehend how they could misconstrue those clues and see something sinister, but that’s his mate that they’re asking not so nice questions about. That’s his Jared who he thought that he’d never have, and Jared’s child is inside of him attempting to kick up a storm in response to Jensen’s distress. The poor pup doesn’t have any room left though, so it just feels like Jensen is getting pummeled from the inside out.

He’s upset and tired and cranky. It’s the prefect recipe for disaster, and Jensen is not gentle when he tears into them for attacking his mate. He isn’t sure exactly what he tells them to shove where or how hard, but he is very certain that his voice dips down into that range that he never had before he was turned. Despite having a deep baritone gifted to him by nature, the growling that he does is pure wolf. He can see the tiniest bit of fear sneak into his sister’s eyes and the tears in his mother’s.

His father’s face speaks of protection and dominance, and for a split second, Jensen’s inner being surges up with the need to meet that challenge. He might let Jared dominate him, but Jensen is an alpha in his own right even if he is fertile. It’s how he attracted and mated with Jared. He could’ve had all of the attractive looks and sentimental attachments in the world, but he would never have been able to mate with Jared if they hadn’t been equal in power.

Mrs. Belton though is old and settled into her alpha ways. She’s over eighty and some days she can’t walk in a straight line because her hip joint is so arthritic. But when she slaps Jensen with her purse and orders him out of the restaurant, Jensen can’t bring himself to turn his growl on her. Old, human Jensen wouldn’t have had that problem, but werewolf Jensen knows better than to antagonize his elders especially when they’re as alpha as Mrs. Belton.

“Get home to your mate,” she tells him once she escorts him outside, “and bring me pie on Saturday. It’s the least you can do for me after making me have to interfere in your soap opera life again.”

It’s insulting, but Jensen knows that he won’t win an argument with her right then, so he stalks off to his car to drive himself home so that he can lick his wounds in peace.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jared isn’t completely hornswoggled by his mate, no matter what Jensen likes to think. He knows that Jensen was excited to go to dinner with his family alone, and even though it hurt just the tiniest bit to know that Jensen wanted to be away from him like that, Jared had understood it.

Sometimes he likes to sit in his momma’s kitchen and have her dote on him without anybody else around, not even Jensen. He knows that it isn’t exactly the same for his mate, but Jensen deserves the chance to build his relationship with his family so that he can feel at least a hint of that same familial bond that Jared has with his own family.

Dinner alone is a rarity, and Jared is just finishing up his liver and onions (which Jensen hated before he got pregnant and has banned from the house ever since he did become with pup) when the doorbell rings.

It startles Jared not because he hadn’t heard the footsteps, but because they came to his door. The neighbors have two teenagers and between courtship displays and just plain overly active social lives, Jared’s learned to tune out the sound of comings and goings of strangers. He figures that he’ll have his golden years for snooping and gossiping, so for the most part he doesn’t eavesdrop or scent the air when he hears others come by.

He isn’t surprised to see Michael Ackles on the other side of his door when he opens it. He sniffed at the air as soon as the buzzer went off, and the humanness of the scent was clear. It was obvious and Jensen-like, and it had only taken Jared a second to recognize Michael’s scent. It took him a few more seconds to smooth his internal hackles, but by the time that he reached the door, he was fairly calm.

“Michael,” Jared feigns surprise like a pro. He doesn’t know what Jensen’s older brother is doing on their doorstep, but whatever his mission, he very specifically did not give prior notice to his visit.

“Jared,” Michael greets in a short, clipped tone. “Can I come in? This won’t take long.”

“Jensen isn’t here right now,” Jared says as he leans to take up more space in the doorway. “He’s out with your parents.”

“I know,” Michael replies steadily.

“Then why are you…”

“Look, Jared, you can let me in and keep this as civilized as possible, or we can discuss this out on your porch where your neighbors can see and hear. Trust me; you don’t want the second option, not on this.”

The neighbors are going to be able to hear if they listen hard enough, regardless of their location, but Jared isn’t going to bother to inform Michael of that just like he isn’t going to apprise the man of his inherent distrust of him. Jared moves to the side just enough to let Michael through the door, but not enough to make his passage comfortable.

Michael shoots him a look that clearly conveys that he knows what Jared is doing, and no he isn’t impressed or intimidated by it. The alpha inside of Jared is a touch disappointed in that, but his human side can admit that Michael is a rich guy who probably has to deal with confrontations far more often than Jared does.

They make it to the kitchen before Michael turns around to face Jared. His stance is open and neutral, but the look in his eyes is pure steel, and his voice is iron, “There’s no point in beating around the bush. I know that there’s no baby, there never was. I know that you’ve been paying that woman to pretend that she’s pregnant, and I know that your brother and that other ‘doctor’ are helping you for whatever fucked up reason.”

Jared’s shock isn’t put on. He has always half expected to end up in a show down with Michael, just not over this.

“I’m sure that you understand the implications of this. Your brother retaining his medical license is probably the least of your worries. I’m not sure what the rest of your plan was, if you were going to illegally adopt some abducted kid or maybe claim that the surrogate miscarried. The supposed ‘due date’ is getting close. I didn’t have time to sit on my thumbs while that overpriced investigator kept turning up nothing.”

“I…” Jared croaks out. He can’t manage to think of something concrete to say.

“I don’t know why you did it, but I figure this has to be about keeping Jensen married to you. Maybe he regretted it and wanted out because you can’t have biological kids. Maybe you knocked some girl up who doesn’t want the baby, and you dreamed this up because he’d leave your cheating ass if he knew.”

Michael’s face almost shows pity as he continues, “It must be difficult, all the pressure to keep it together. I’ve looked into this town, and divorce doesn’t seem to be the thing to do. But you’re young, maybe you made a mistake. I don’t know what the hell you did, Jared Padalecki, but I’m not going to let you hurt Jensen any more. You let him go, and I’ll let this drop. You can tell the whole town that your surrogate had a miscarriage, and I’ll even give you some money to keep things quiet. Jensen was born for better than this town, and you know it. We’ll take good care of him and get him back on his feet, and you can get an annulment and start over.”

“Fuck you,” is the response that Jared gets out of his mouth.

“No, fuck you,” Michael retorts evenly. “I don’t want to hurt Jensen any more than necessary. I haven’t told anybody else about this. Not my wife, not my parents. Just me and an investigator who needs my money to survive. I can keep this quiet, Jared. But I will blow it up if you try to keep this farce going. That’s my little brother’s life you’re playing with, and I will bring down your brother, you and anybody else that I can find that has any ties to this scheme of yours if you try to play with me.”

Michael takes a step closer to Jared and lowers his voice as he looks unflinchingly into Jared’s eyes, “I’m not losing my brother a second time.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There’s a strange car when Jensen pulls into his driveway, and with the state that he’s in, the sight doesn’t fill him with curiosity so much as it does dread. The car itself smells like a hundred different people, and the plates on the back are from a state that is far, far away from where Jensen lives.

It’s clearly a rental car, but something about it is familiar, and as Jensen makes his way towards his front door, the other smells grow fainter, and the familiar one grows. That its Michael’s scent doesn’t exactly encourage Jensen, but it does perplex him.

The Ackleses hadn’t mentioned anything about Michael coming, and even if they had thought up some sort of harebrained scheme to call up Michael to ‘deal’ with Jared while they talked to Jensen, he doubts that they would’ve hidden it quite so well.

After all, as insulted as he was on Jared’s behalf let alone his own, Jensen can still identify the intervention nature of the talk they tried having with him. They were seriously asking him if everything was all right, and even though he was seriously pissed at them for listening to Aaron about his and Jared’s relationship, he could see where they’d be concerned.

But Jensen figures that every once and a while he doesn’t have to be the one to bend. Maybe it’s just plain old pregnancy hormones, but he’d like it to be about somebody else having to adapt for once, somebody else having to consider him. Some days it seems like all Jensen has ever done is think about other people. The pack and its hierarchy, human’s and the way that they view the pack, Jared and the way that he views Jensen’s family, Jensen’s family and the way that they view everything… It’s a pain to balance all of those opinions, and Jensen’s tired of it.

And because he’s tired of it, he doesn’t have any patience left in the reservoir when he comes into his kitchen to see his brother and his lover posturing at each other. Jared’s teeth are actually bared, and Michael is glaring at Jared like he isn’t the least bit intimidated by the giant bulk of him.

It’s actually impressive from a clinical point of view. Jensen doesn’t know many people who wouldn’t be scared by a pissed off Jared, but then again he hasn’t had much occasion to see Jared that angry. It just isn’t Jared’s preferred way of being, and the last person to ire Jared to the point he seems to be at was, ironically, Aaron Davis.

Jensen knows that he should ask what’s going on. He should ask questions and demand answers, but he doesn’t want to do any of that. All he wants is to go curl up on his bed and pretend that the whole day just never happened.

“Jensen,” Michael begins. There is surprise on his face, and Jensen can well imagine that his brother is looking at Jensen’s round and misshapen figure.

“Get the fuck out of my house,” Jensen growls.

Shock covers both Michael’s and Jared’s faces at the proclamation. They both open their mouths to speak, but Jensen cuts them off with, “I mean it. Get your ass out of my house. Put it in that fancy assed rental you’ve got and drive somewhere that isn’t here. I’m not in the mood for anymore drama.”

“I…”

“NOW!” Jensen bellows, his temper fraying to its thinnest point. He doesn’t think that he’s ever felt this worn out before, and it almost frightens him. He isn’t a control freak, but he’s never been one to allow his emotions to rule him. Now it’s like they’ve gotten hold of him and won’t let go.

Michael looks like he wants to argue, but he moves towards the door. He shoots Jared a glance that can’t be anything but warning, and strides out of the house at confident pace. He doesn’t hurry or halt in his approach, and Jensen feels a stab of envy at how well his older brother can control himself in a confrontational situation.

Jared slams the door behind Michael and throws the lock on it. The line of his shoulders is tense, and even the muscles in his forearms are bulging.

“That asshole,” Jared mutters to himself more than to Jensen.

That comment should be asked about. There was clearly an altercation going on when Jensen arrived home, and he should ask about it, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He leaves the room while Jared is still staring out the window watching the taillights of Michel’s rental disappear down their driveway.

He isn’t sure why he stops by the nursery to grab his stuffed bunny off its appointed perch, but as he clutches it to his chest, it makes him feel the tiniest bit better. It’s comforting. It’s like if he just squeezes it tight enough, his hurt will transfer to the old, worn cloth and fiber fill, and his heart will quit hurting quite so much.

He leaves his shoes in the hallway, uncaring of where they land or if Jared will stumble over them in one of his sadly regular fits of clumsiness. His pants and shirt create a trail to the master bedroom that would be indicative of an altogether different emotion and situation if it was any other time in their mateship.

Jensen rips the gel pads off his stomach with a viciousness that only hurts him, but the sting on his stomach gives him an excuse to let the threatening tears start to fall. He feels horrible. He feels like a failure. He’s Cinderella, and he got to go to the ball, but he messed it all up and had his fairy tale ending taken away from him.

It’s not fair. It isn’t.

What did he ever do that was so horrible that he couldn’t just have his family? It isn’t like he was planning on trying to become one of them or anything. Things like this would never happen to the likes of Aaron Davis. That bastard would glom on to his rich, human relatives like a leech onto a swimmer’s leg and never let go. He would get to keep his family.

All Jensen wanted was to get to know them, and fate just decided that Jensen couldn’t have what he wanted.

History deems him an orphan, and it looks like the future is going to keep up that trend.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are certain discussions that one should have with one’s mate while both are in their human forms. Jared figures that discussing the Michael incident is one of those conversations. He also suspects that the state Jensen was in when he arrived home the prior evening is also one of those conversations, but he can’t exactly confirm that because Jensen is refusing to shift out of his wolf form.

It’s irritating. More than that, it’s worrisome. Jensen doesn’t react to things by crying and sobbing and then shifting when Jared comes into their bedroom to ask what’s wrong.

Jensen is usually reasonable and willing to either talk things out or yell at Jared for being a stupid moron. On occasion he has been known to deal with things by shifting into his wolf form and kicking ass, but the only thing getting its ass kicked at the moment is the poor, beleaguered bunny that Jensen’s been dragging around with him all day.

Jared is fairly certain that by now it’s soaked down with werewolf spit, and that concerns him all the more because Jensen has a great aversion to carrying non-food items in his mouth while shifted. He doesn’t even chew on rawhides even though they’re tasty.

Dislike for more wolf like or canine behaviors is common in turned wolves, or so Jared’s been told. He can’t be bothered to care about whether Jensen’s distaste is a learned behavior or not. All Jared knows it that Jensen isn’t fond of curling up in a ball and whining to himself whenever his mate tries to talk to him, but that isn’t keeping him from exhibiting that particular behavior.

Despite his normal aversions to it, Jensen has allowed Jared to sit next to him and hold him. He’s even allowed Jared to pet him, although he also normally doesn’t enjoy that, and it worries Jared to see his mate so out of sorts. He has tried to start explaining the Michael thing, hoping that it might spur Jensen to shift and discuss their options, but all Jensen’s done is look at him listlessly and sigh.

The actions of his mate are taking Jared from angry to depressed. The worried part of him isn’t going away though. There is too much to worry about, and the only choice he has in the matter is whether he spends his time fretting about the things he does know or the things he doesn’t.

“Jensen,” Jared starts to try to talk to his mate again, but before Jensen can growl or howl at him, the doorbell rings.

Jared takes a moment to fantasize about ripping out the wiring to the happy sounding chimes before he goes to greet whoever has decided to come interrupting him in his current state of marital not-so-bliss.

He isn’t surprised to smell one of the Ackleses at the door, although he would’ve bet money on it being Michael and not Joseph.

“Jensen’s not home,” Jared greets his father-in-law gruffly.

Joe’s lips twist into an amused smile that Jared thinks is rather inappropriate for the situation. He might not know what went down between Jensen and his relatives, but he’s got a very solid hunch that it wasn’t good.

“Of course he isn’t,” Joe says.

Jared crosses his arms across his chest and puffs it out ever so slightly to emphasize his strength. If anything, Joe is even less impressed by the display than his son had been the night before, and Jared curses corporate America for making the Ackles men so ballsy.

“Well, if Jensen is unavailable, perhaps you’d like to take a walk?” Joe suggests almost amiably.

Jared frowns at him, but holds back the grunt that he’d like to add. He was raised to respect his elders and alphas in positions of authority. Just because the man in front of him happens to be human, that doesn’t mean that Jared can’t see that he has a weird sort of pack tie to Jared’s mate.

Respect though doesn’t translate to stupidity. If Michael went to daddy last night and decided not to wait to start in on his plan, Jared wants to have the illusion of safety that the four walls of his home afford him.

“Look,” Joe starts after a moment or two of silence from Jared, “I know that I’m not your most favorite person in the world right now, but we’re not going to get anything resolved if we don’t start talking. I can admit that I’ve been an idiot, but I’m here with the intention of making things right.”

“How?” Jared asks bluntly. He doesn’t mean to sound disbelieving, but he is, so he doesn’t feel too bad that the sentiment is clear.

“Well, I figured that we could discuss that,” Joe says evenly.

“No,” Jared says, “I mean how were you an idiot? I’d like to know.”

Thankfully Joe doesn’t take that as the admission of cluelessness that it really is, because he seems to think that Jared wants details on how stupid of a person Joe was rather than what he was stupid about.

Joe’s lips twist again with the smile of a man who knows something that nobody else does. It’s the same look that Jensen gets on his face when he’s got a secret that he just can’t wait to spring on Jared, and it’s a touch worrisome to see it.

“For one thing, I should’ve realized that you’d bitten my son a lot sooner than I did,” Joe tells him.

“Excuse me?” Jared asks. He shakes his head a little as if he’s trying to shake water from his ears, because that sounded a lot like Joe knows about werewolves.

“I said that I should’ve realized that you were a werewolf and that you turned my boy,” Joe repeats loudly as if speaking to a person that is hard of hearing.

The old guy is downright smirking now, and Jared would slap him except for the fact that he knows that he looks about as flabbergasted as he feels. There is a startled “WHAT?” from inside the house, and Jared doesn’t appreciate the irony of the fact that it is a mention of Jensen’s turning that finally convinces the were to shift back to his human form.

“Sounds like Jensen made it home,” Joe points out.

Jared snarls at him and stalks back inside, but he leaves the door open.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The bathrobe that Jensen threw on in haste is enormous. He’d purchased it for Jared back when Jensen was away at college. The Padalecki family Christmas plans had always included him as honorary ‘best bud,’ and he had drawn Jared’s name for their annual secret Santa game. Jensen remembers being nervous about it. The desire to get Jared something nice had warred with Jensen’s budget, and he’d ended up buying the robe out of a clearance bin. It’s plush and soft against his skin, but it is also humongous, even on Jared.

The robe more than covers Jensen’s belly, and he’s thankful for the ampleness of it because he doesn’t have anything else on, and his father is sitting directly across the living room from him. The absolute last thing he wants to do is flash the older man, no matter how funny Jared would probably find it.

The room is full of silence. The air itself feels thick and heavy. Beside Jensen, Jared sits rigidly. His only movement is the slight puffing of his chest as he breathes, and Jensen knows that it’s a primal instinct thing. Jared’s body is readying itself to attack even though the potential threat is older and significantly weaker than Jared.

“How did you find out?” Jensen finally whispers. There are several possibilities that he’s thought up, but all of them involve a member of the pack either saying something directly to his father, or slipping up so badly that an unsuspecting human would immediately accept the truth of the situation.

But those scenarios don’t feel right. It seems illogical to assume that Joe found out the truth last night and is by the morning just fine and dandy with it.

“That Jared turned you? I started putting the pieces together in my head. There were enough clues with this town, and with the way that you reacted last night, it just sort of clicked. But I’ll admit that it wasn’t exactly the first thing that I thought about.”

“You knew about werewolves previously to this?” Jared asks.

Joe shrugs and rubs his forehead. “I heard about them, yes. A long time ago, when Carol was still pregnant with you,” he gestures at Jensen, “there was a man in my company named Sal Jameson. You may have met him?”

Jensen nods slowly. “He said that he used to work for you.”

Joe chuckles mirthlessly. “I suppose he did. Sal and I went to college together. I was the rich business man’s kid ready to get a degree in something that I already knew everything about, and Sal was the scholarship case. We weren’t great friends, but I respected him. He wasn’t like my peers who just thought their parent’s businesses should be handed over to them. So when we graduated, I went off to the corporate offices and told my father that we’d be idiots if we didn’t hire him.”

“Honestly, I didn’t see Sal for years after that. I met your mother, married her, settled down and started building my own legacy. Sal worked his way up in the company, and it wasn’t until your grandfather died that we met up again. I was ambitious, and Sal was just the sort of man that I needed to make my goals reality.”

“But Sal left the company,” Jensen says.

Joe nods. “And I hadn’t the foggiest clue why. He was doing so well, and I had a plum job lined up for him. One of Dad’s best men was retiring, and the position was perfect for Sal. We’d become friends. Your mother had been making certain to invite him to all of her dinner parties, trying to match him up with a good wife, and he had a bright future in front of him. Then one day he walked into my office to turn in his letter of resignation. He told me that he was going to run a godforsaken hotel of all things.”

“Of course, I was young then. I wasn’t going to let my friend throw his life down the drain because of some crisis, so I kept bugging him about it. I had two weeks to get him to change his mind, and I was going to use that to my advantage. I almost had him convinced. I could see it in his eyes. He didn’t want to go, not really, and I’d always been good at negotiations. “

“Then one day this man comes into my office. How he got on my got planner, I’ll never know, but I suspect that Sal did it. The guy wasn’t much to look at, short, balding… He had this wart up by his left eyebrow, and it moved while he talked. I remember because I focused in on it when he started explaining things to me.”

“He told me to leave Sal alone, and I told him he had some goddamned nerve and to get out of my office before I called security. So he looked at me, all level and intimidating and told me that he wasn’t leaving, and I wasn’t going to make him. He barked it out like it was an order even.”

Joe laughs and shakes his head. “You should’ve seen the look on his face when I launched my fist into his face. I don’t think he’d been stood up to in years. Which was okay, because neither had I, and when my security team came in to separate us from the out and out brawl we were having in my office, I had to admit that we both made a sorry pair. It’s a good thing that bastard had so much to hide, because he could’ve sued me for assault.”

Jared’s stance eases a little as he shifts. He’s curious, and Jensen knows that despite his cold demeanor, his curiosity is going to get the better of him. “The man was Sal’s mate?” Jared guesses.

It’s a fair assumption. Being gay was still something to be hidden back in those days, much more than it is in current times. Jensen can see where Jared would think that, but it turns out that Jared is wrong.

“No, he was Sal’s Alpha. I’m not sure why he decided to tell me about it, although he blamed that on the fact that we were almost evenly matched in that fight, and he said that as a human I shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Joe snorts in amusement, “Bastard thought he was paying me a compliment by saying that.”

“In any case he started telling me why it was in my best interest to let Sal go. I told him that all of his reasons were bullshit, and I didn’t care if Sal was a wolf-man, he was still the best person for the job, and I was a progressive thinker. So he pulled out the big guns and told me that Sal had fallen in love with Carol.”

“I didn’t want to believe it, you know? Sal was my friend, and Carol was almost six months pregnant with you, but apparently that didn’t matter. He’d gone to his Alpha about it. Told him that he wanted her, wanted to turn her and that he’d take you in as his own ‘pup.’ He said that he’d take Michael in as well because there was no way that she wasn’t going to get custody, not with how I’d been working all those hours and neglecting her.”

“I never thought that I could get angrier than I did that day. Oh, I knew that Sal had done the right thing, or at least tried to do it, but I wasn’t the kind of man that was going to take news like that well. I honestly don’t know a man that would take that well, and I told that warty old bastard just exactly what I would do if Sal did go and try to ‘turn’ my Carol let alone take my children from me.”

“Of course, he couldn’t resist playing his trump card of ‘forever’ to me, telling me that if Carol did say yes to Sal there wasn’t ever going to be a chance to get her back.” Joe looks away for a moment, his eyes burning with remembered anger before he continues, “I don’t think that Sal even knows that his Alpha came to see me or that I know the big secret. After that man left, I never wanted to hear the word ‘werewolf’ again.”

“Then you truly were taken from me, and Sal showed up with this group of friends that I just knew had to be werewolves. I was desperate, so desperate that I let him back in my home. I got in trouble with the police because of all the strangers I was letting traipse around, and of course Carol noticed my odd behavior, but… I just didn’t know what else to do.”

Joe sighs deeply before continuing, “Obviously none of that worked out, and after the searches died off, I never gave much thought to werewolves again. I honestly can’t tell the difference, and if it wasn’t for how this whole town is so off with all of the sniffing and the meat markets and the abundance of dog prints in the snow with no dogs around, I’m not sure I would’ve made the connection.”

“I didn’t think about the prints,” Jared mumbles to himself, and Jensen gives him a pass on that because he didn’t exactly think of that either.

Joe either doesn’t hear or doesn’t acknowledge Jared’s comment because he starts talking again, “I might not know much about werewolves, but I do remember that they mate for life. I know that what we asked you last night was insulting to you, Jensen. Obviously you were upset by it, and we shouldn’t have allowed that man to play on our fears about your weight like that. I am sorry that we hurt you by asking about your mate and not getting your side of the story first.”

Jensen bites his lip and nods. He still harbors some resentment towards them for listening to Aaron, but he can grasp the concept that they’re concerned at how, in their eyes at least, obese that Jensen’s gotten in the past few months. He’s almost due, and his baby is large.

He looks over at Jared and holds his gaze there until his mate looks back. Jared quirks an eyebrow at him in question, and the expression makes him look so young that for a split second, Jensen feels like a dirty bugger who has been out robbing cradles.

Then Jared tilts his head just a little more, and a wariness enters his eyes as Jensen slides his hand over his swollen stomach and cuts his eyes ever so slightly toward his father.

Jared’s gaze darts protectively down to the swell, and Jensen can see the debate raging in his mind, but Jared nods sharply in assent faster than Jensen imagined he would.

Taking a deep breath, Jensen turns back towards Joe and says, “Look, I’m not sure what kind of details that Sal’s Alpha told you about turned males.”

Concern steals across his face, and he asks, “Is there something wrong? Did, did your bite not work right?”

“No, no it worked fine,” Jensen tells him with a half laugh, thinking about his own fears on that subject when he couldn’t make the decision to turn. “I’m perfectly normal for a human male that’s been turned. I want you to understand that first.”

“Okay,” Joe says warily.

“There are certain biological changes that happen when a human male gets turned, and I don’t want to burden you with all of the details of why and how, but the bottom line is that I’m not fat. I’m pregnant.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I think I need a drink,” is the first thing that Joe says after about a four minute silence. He doesn’t try to argue that Jensen is delusional, which Jared thinks is a good thing, but the human does look just a touch too pale for comfort.

Jared feels a little sorry for him because tactful isn’t the word that he would choose to describe the way that his mate had broken the news of his pregnancy. He is not sure what exactly Jensen could have said to lead up to the declaration, but he’s got the feeling that there could’ve been a little less blurting and a little more meandering done. That approach might’ve given both Jensen and Joe time to adjust to the knowledge being out there.

Jensen is a wall of nerves beside him on the couch, but when Jared reaches over to pat his knee reassuringly, his mate slaps his hand away and gives him a glare that could charbroil steaks.

The motion seems to jar loose Joe’s tongue, because he starts talking.

“How is that possible? You’re a man. I was there the day that you were born, and there wasn’t any vagina in sight. I mean, obviously there was your mother’s but…” Joe’s babble grinds to an awkward halt, and Jared does his best to remain calm and objective.

For one thing he doesn’t think that humans ever sit down and contemplate the idea that their male child will one day bear children. It’s got be a shock. For another, Jared is going to need Joe’s help in dealing with Michael. It’s best not to snap at him while he’s dealing with a surprise like an unexpected pregnancy if he wants to stay on the man’s good side.

“You can believe that I can turn into a dog, but I can’t be pregnant?” Jensen scoffs. He, apparently, did not receive the message about treading carefully on delicate eggshells of conversations.

“Wolf,” Jared corrects softly.

Jensen swats at him again, but gives his father the glower that Jared figures is his.

“It’s different,” Joe says.

“My DNA got rewritten to the point that I can, at will, change myself into the form of an entirely different species. What makes it so hard to believe that I’m pregnant?” Jensen asks.

“Male wolves don’t get pregnant,” Joe instantly shoots back, “and I’m not saying that I don’t believe you. I’m saying that it’s a shock.”

Jared almost feels sorry for the guy because while Jensen isn’t in a difficult mood very often, once he gets in one, he’s stubborn about coming out of it. Not that Jared blames his mate for feeling the way that he does, it’s just that Jared knows that of all of the problems that they’re facing at the moment, Joe’s astonishment isn’t a battle that needs fighting.

“Whatever,” Jensen grumbles. His hand splays over the swell of his stomach and rubs there with more pressure than his normal checking caress that he uses to say ‘hi’ to the baby.

“I’m fine, Jared,” Jensen snaps without even looking in Jared’s direction.

Anyone looking at the expression on Jensen’s face would know that it is a lie, but Jared doesn’t call his mate on it. All Jensen means is that he’s physically fine, nothing wrong with his body or his baby, and that’s all that Jared would want to push about at the moment. They have some pressing issues, and as much as Jared wants to let Jensen and Joe have their time to argue over assumptions and astonishments and everything else, there is another matter that needs to be addressed.

“Look, I know that this is all very emotional right now, but I need to talk to the both of you about something,” Jared says.

They both look sort of peeved at Jared’s intrusion into their stare off, but he can’t bring himself to care. Jensen will forgive him, and Jared only cares about Joe’s opinion for two reasons. The first is that Jensen wants a relationship with the man who sired him. The second is that Jared needs Joe’s help with Michael, and waiting for Joe to get comfortable with the idea of Jensen actually carrying the man’s grandchild just isn’t going to happen. They don’t have time for it.

Jared takes a deep breath before repeating what happened with Michael the night before. Jensen growls a little under his breath, and his eyes flash with murder when Jared repeats the threats given. His reaction soothes away a little of the hurt that Jared had felt at being ignored by his mate during his earlier attempts to communicate.

He knows that Jensen loves him and would do anything to protect their family, but it’s nice to see a spark of something other than sadness and worry inside of him. As much as Jared hates to admit it, the earlier way that Jensen had responded had almost frightened him. He isn’t used to a Jensen who doesn’t want to fight.

“Michael, Michael,” Joe shakes his head as he speaks. “I told him to leave things be with that investigator. Secrets are there for a reason, and it has always been clear to me that Jared wasn’t out to gold dig. That would’ve been a bit difficult to do given the fact that the two of you were already married by the time that you found out who you were.”

“Well he obviously didn’t listen,” Jensen says. His voice is full of worry, but it’s only because Jared knows him so well that he can tell. To any other person, to Joe, it will sound like Jensen is just bitter.

Still, Joe doesn’t seem to take offense at the comment. “It’s never been his strong suit, and I doubt that he’s going to listen to me now if I tell him to back off.”

“Why not?” Jared asks.

Jensen shoots him a look that clearly tells him he’s an idiot. “Because they’re human, Jared. Just because my father can best an alpha, that doesn’t make him one or any of his family his pack. It doesn’t work that way with them.”

“What he means is that Michael is going to need a good reason to back off, and unless you can figure out a very impressive lie, you’re going to have to tell him the truth. He isn’t going to run off to the press about werewolves and male pregnancy. For one thing he isn’t going to want to be called crazy. For another he’s spent his entire life in business and the public eye. He knows what kind of frenzy it would cause,” Joe says.

“And how do you think that he’s going to react to Jensen being a werewolf and pregnant? I caused it. I turned him, and Michael seems to like to judge my motivations and intent. We tell him the truth, and he shifts it around to mean what he wants,” Jared argues.

“Maybe he will,” Jensen speaks up sadly, “but Jay, we don’t exactly have another option. What’re we going to do? Accuse him of trying to blackmail you and Jeff? There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that the press wouldn’t pick that story up and run with it. ‘Abducted Man’s Gay Partner Arranges Black Market Adoption’ – we’d be on tabloid covers across the country.”

“He could hurt you,” Jared frets.

“He already has hurt me, Jared. So has your brother and my mother and sister and father. For that matter, on occasion, so have you. And don’t pretend that I’ve never hurt you, because I know that I have. It’s the nature of family and relationships. I’m not thrilled with the situation, but I’m not going to try another lie out to see if we can get it to slide this time. Either he hates you, or he doesn’t. Either he loves, me or he doesn’t. But it’s going to be for the right reasons.”

“What about the rest of them?” Jared asks.

“Honesty is the best policy? I don’t think it’s fair to tell Joe and Michael and leave Jess and Carol out of the loop, is it? I want to be judged for me, Jared.”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure if you’re sure. Not the only one in this marriage,” Jensen points out.

If they didn’t have company watching them, Jared might’ve been tempted to point out that Jensen was very recently acting like he was, but that isn’t the kind of conversation that any man wants to have in front of his father-in-law.

“I don’t like it,” Jared answers his mate honestly, “but I don’t see a way around it either. I’m just hoping that Michael can keep his mouth shut and doesn’t send his investigator around here trying to dig up dirt on the pack.”

“I can take care of that,” Joe offers.

“Yeah, because you did such a great job the first time,” Jared shoots back sarcastically. Joe isn’t his most favorite person in the world, and the situation is starting to wear on him.

“I was a bit distracted at the time,” Joe bites back his eyes darting over to Jensen and back again.

“Don’t start a fight, either of you,” Jensen warns. “It isn’t going to accomplish anything except to make me crankier than I already am.”

Joe laughs a little at that, and Jared glares at him, but the older man only has eyes for Jensen. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice before. That is the exact same look that your mother always had on her face when she got to the last month of her pregnancies. She was always miserable, and she always accused me of making too big of babies with my, ‘goddamned gigantic Ackles genes.’”

Jared snorts, and Jensen hits his arm. “Shut up,” he growls.

“Genetic crankiness,” Jared points out.

“I hate you,” Jensen tells him then amends his statement by saying, “both of you.”

“Well, as long as we’re being honest about our feelings, I still need a drink,” Joe says.

“I still want to rip Michael’s throat out with my teeth,” Jared shares.

“Great, so you knocked up one of my sons and want to kill the other. Sound like we have a great start on becoming a dysfunctional family,” Joe tells him.

Jared wants to be mad at that, but it’s kind of true, so he just nods and says, “So how about that drink?”

Jensen glares at him and rubs his belly pointedly. Or at least Jared thinks it is pointedly. There is only so much that a guy can intimate with hand gestures on his stomach.

“We have some really good orange juice in the fridge?” Jared suggests with a question.

“I was thinking milk, thanks Honey,” Jensen drawls back too innocently.

Joe stifles a laugh and mutters something about Jensen being just like his mother, and while Jared is sure that his childcare books tell him never to make those sorts of comments to his offspring, he figures that the best course of action is not to discuss parenting techniques with his father-in-law.

Instead he gets up to go fetch the beverages and maybe pour himself something as well. But… not anything too stiff, or Jensen will have his balls and not in a pleasant, mating sort of way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Booking the hotel conference room is the easy part of talking to Michael. Jensen knows the right people in town, and even if his father wasn’t footing the bill for its use, it is likely that he would’ve gotten it at a steep discount just because of who he is.

Jensen doesn’t want Michael in his home, his den for the discussion, and Jared is in enthusiastic support of his decision. If it all goes pear shaped, he doesn’t want that memory to taint their home.

It’s the fact that Jensen wants to be the one to talk to Michael that is giving Jared heartburn. It’s bothering Joe too for that matter, but Jensen cares more about what Jared thinks. If he is ignoring Jared’s wishes, he can ignore his father’s as well. He figures that their desire to be the ones to speak is because they’re both annoying alpha types who feel the need to protect him.

Jensen appreciates it, he does, but it seems like his entire family unit has this idea that he’s still that little boy that got stolen away and left in the woods. Some days he needs rescuing. Like everybody else in the world, he can’t do it all alone. But he’s a grown man and fully capable of confronting a situation even if his avoidance contributed to creating the situation in the first place.

“This is interesting,” is what Michael says when he sees the three of them sitting there. He appears to be a little surprised at his father’s presence, but he doesn’t try to feign bewilderment about why he’s meeting his little brother in a strange room.

“Sit down,” Jensen orders.

Michal scowls at that. “I don’t know what he told you,” he starts off with, his finger pointing in Jared’s direction.

“Jared told me exactly what you said to him,” Jensen replies.

“I doubt that,” Michael says with a frown as he jerks a chair out from the table and sits down in it.

Jared looks like he wants to launch himself from his own seat and tear Michael’s throat out with his teeth, but he remains silent.

“I know about the surrogate. I’ve always known about the surrogate, Michael because she never was the person that was pregnant and never was supposed to be except on paper,” Jensen tells him.

He doesn’t wait for the surprise to ebb away from Michael’s face or for him to start asking questions. He just keeps on with, “I could lie to you, tell you that this is all some elaborate scheme to protect Jared’s sister or cousin or some other unfortunate girl who had something horrible happen to her, but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to tell you the truth, but first I want you to know that I’m a grown man. I’m going to ask you to quit using investigators to look into my personal business. You want to know me? Then you can get to do that the normal way. I’m not that boy you lost, and you can’t regain the past by searching mine. I want you to understand that.”

Michael’s face turns red as Jensen is talking, and he keeps shooting murderous looks over in Jared’s direction. For what he thinks that Jared has done, Jensen doesn’t blame him, but at the same time he’s a little irked that Michael believes that Jensen is so brainwashed by his mate that he can’t think for himself.

“So what is it that you have to tell me?” Michael grits out between his teeth.

Jensen pushes his chair back and stands up. “I think it’ll be easier if I just show you,” he says as he starts to unbutton his shirt.

“Hold on a second there,” Michael sputters, and Jared seems to agree with him if the possessive growl he lets loose is anything to go by.

Joseph just laughs, and Jensen smiles a bit at that.

Michael’s, “What are you,” gets quickly replaced with a, “What is that?” when Jensen’s taut and round stomach comes into view. It’s clearly firm and swollen, and Jared’s damned stretch marks are on prominent display in the fluorescent lighting of the room.

“What’s wrong with you?” Michael asks in a worried tone.

“He’s pregnant,” Joe tells him, “Just accept it Michael, it’ll be easier on you.”

“That’s impossible! You… Dad, you can’t believe that he’s pregnant,” Michael protests.

“I am though,” Jensen tells him.

“But… is this some sort of weird, medical trial thing?” Michael asked, his eyes darting from one person to another.

Jensen shrugs a little and looks at Jared for assistance. When he planned out his speech to his brother, the whole werewolf thing had just been stated in a matter of fact manner, but the way Michael’s head is shaking back and forth, Jensen can see the arguments and denials building inside him for just the pregnancy.

“I think maybe I should just show you the rest too,” Jensen says as he reaches for the zipper to his pants.

“I don’t need to see that!” Michael practically shouts as he claps his hand over his eyes.

Joe starts laughing even harder, his chortles edging into hysteria, and Jared follows suit. Michael manages to get both hands clamped firmly over his eyes, and Jensen wonders if he’s the only one in the room who hasn’t lost it.

Then again, it’s easier to shift without an audience, and nobody is looking at him, so he just shoves his pants down his legs and shifts. His feet shape into far smaller paws, and he steps out of his pants and underwear easily enough. His shirt is still wrapped around his torso from where he rucked it up to show off his belly, but it hardly impairs his movement as he makes his way over to Michael’s side.

Inside of him, the pup moves around excitedly. His kid clearly takes after his father, always excited to be in his wolf form, and Jensen resigns himself to having muddy puppy paw prints all over his house for the next however may years. His little one is going to be a trouble maker, he can feel it.

As he sits and waits for his brother to take his hands away from his eyes and have the shock of his life, Jensen has to admit that maybe the trouble making part is going to come from him.

The thought makes him smile a little on the inside.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Are you doing okay? You’re doing okay, right? You’re fine? Okay? Not feeling bad? You’re…”

“Okay?” Jensen finishes for his husband.

Jared’s mouth quirks a little, tugging it out of its worried frown. “Yeah.”

“I’m fine,” Jensen tells him. “Which given the state that you’re working yourself into is a good thing. Seriously, Jared, people have babies every day and the vast majority of them don’t have a scheduled appointment with their doctor.”

“Most of those people are women,” Jared frets as he runs his hand over Jensen’s belly.

“And you’re just now thinking about this? It’s not like I plan on trying to shift him out. I’m not even in labor,” Jensen says with a little smile.

“You were,” Jared accuses.

“False labor is not the same thing, and the doctor told you that it’s normal this late in the game and probably wasn’t all the stress from Aaron and Michael and the rest of the family. I know that you know that because it was a grand total of two contractions, and you called my doctor in the middle of the night in a panic over it.”

“You didn’t want to call at all,” Jared reminds him.

“Because I was right,” Jensen says with a roll of his eyes.

“You didn’t know that,” Jared grumbles.

Jensen lets the comment go because Jared is worried, and his one moment of false labor isn’t something that he cares to squabble about on the actual day of his son’s birth.

With Jensen being so close to his due date, it isn’t unusual to have labor symptoms before the actual event. But Jared is insistent on blaming the family situation for it, and Jensen has given up on changing his mate’s mind about it because the experience was stressful, but it’s also over. Arguing about the past isn’t going to change it.

Michael hadn’t exactly taken the news about the existence of werewolves all that well. While he understood the need for all of the secrecy and arrangements for the fake surrogate, he was very suspicious of the pack and their adoption and turning of the human boy that they found. His paranoia shifted from Jared and their pup to Jared and the pack in general, but it at least got him off their immediate worry list.

As Joe had predicted, Michael had promised to keep his mouth shut about the whole werewolf and surrogacy issue. The extraction of a promise not to investigate the pack was harder to obtain, but he did eventually give it. Jensen was well aware of what his childhood and mating would look like if an outsider ever obtained the exact details of it all. Even having lived it, he doubted some of the wisdom of the Alpha’s decisions, and he had no desire for Michael to stir up trouble with the pack.

His mother cried when he told her. She cried and sobbed and didn’t say much of anything at all except for, “My poor baby,” over and over again. Then she dried her tears and proceeded to give Jared a thirty minute lecture on how to take care of Jensen and the baby and how Jensen as a new mother was going to need his support and something about shooting his balls off.

Or the testicle removal threat could’ve been in the forty-five minute lecture that she gave Joseph for not telling her about werewolves in the first place. The lectures sort of started blending together after a while.

Jess had been the surprise. While Jensen couldn’t call her thrilled, she was certainly inquisitive and almost delighted at the idea of werewolves. She wanted to know more, and Jensen would’ve blamed it on some romantic notions that she was harboring except for the fact that the look in her eye reminded him of himself just a little too much.

The longing of it, the wanting used to haunt him back when he was still human and still battling within himself at the idea of being bitten and turned.

He’d had to break eye contact with his sister after a while. It was cowardly, but if what he thought he saw was truly there, he didn’t want to have any part in it. His abduction and turning were enough strain on the Ackleses, and their reactions were enough strain on him and Jared and their pup.

If Jess is longing for something less human in her life, then Jensen isn’t going to be a part of her exploring that. In fact, he is going to do his best to ignore it because his desire to be with the pack made sense, but she has been raised human and the concept of werewolves has always been some abstract thing to her.

The fact that she had been so susceptible to Aaron’s lies, and was so interested in werewolves… Jensen is just going to do his best to ignore that until he has some time to process it. He’s admittedly afraid to know what it means, and well aware of the fact that it could very well be nothing.

It’s the possibility that it might mean something deeper that bothers him, and he thinks that he’s earned the right to just be concerned about his mate a child for a while.

The day that the Ackleses left to go back to Texas, Jensen only felt relief, and he feels bad about that.

Once he came clean, his family as a whole was rather supportive of him and his relationship with Jared. Jensen is man enough to admit that their deception helped to cause some of the problems with his family, but he can’t say that he would go back and change his choices.

Exposing the pack and the existence of werewolves to any human is a dangerous proposition. Jensen has lived with that fact for a long time, and the need to protect and defend the pack was in his blood stream long before it flowed with werewolf instead of human plasma.

“I wish we could’ve seen that fucker get his walking papers,” Jared grouses beside Jensen, jerking him out of his philosophical musings.

A quick glance in Jared’s direction shows Jensen that his mate is looking everywhere but the clock on the wall. As soon as they had gotten up that morning, Jared had been a bundle of nerves, asking if it was time to leave for the hospital every five minutes just like some overgrown child asking if they were there yet. Eventually, Jensen had caved in even though he knew that it would end with them sitting in a waiting room.

“You just wanted another chance to punch him is all,” Jensen accuses his husband fondly.

Alpha had decided to formally renounce Aaron Davis from the pack on the day that the Ackleses’ plane departed. Jensen knows that the decision was made to keep both him and Jared from making a scene at the official ceremony at the town hall, but he can’t say that it wasn’t a good call on the Alpha’s part.

Jensen still wants to bite Aaron’s gonads off, and he can only imagine the kind of pummeling Jared wants to give the wolf for interfering with their personal business in such a underhanded way.

“At least your mom got through,” Jensen adds as almost an afterthought.

Jared’s father and Jeff had both been well hemmed in during the proceedings and hearing, but Jared’s mother had always been known as the caring, sweet one of the family. Jensen still hasn’t gotten the full details out of any member of the pack, but he’s heard that Aaron is going to have a scar for the rest of his life and that Mrs. Padalecki is officially on leave pending investigation of her ‘violent outburst.’

“Shows me not to get on your bad side,” Jared agrees with a hint of humor breaking through his nervousness, “mothers are very protective of their pups.”

Jensen’s about to retort when the nurse comes into the room to let them know that they’re ready to take him, and suddenly there’s a lump in his throat that wasn’t there before. By the end of the day he’s going to have a baby in his arms – their baby.

His heart starts pounding as soon as he gets up onto his feet, and for a moment he’s absolutely certain that the only thing keeping him upright is the hand that Jared places on his bowed out lower back. Then the baby moves just a little inside of him, as if he already knows that today is the day that he gets to say, ‘hello’ to the world at last, and Jensen finds it inside of himself to keep going.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jared is never, ever doing the whole pregnancy thing again.

Never.

It’s too nerve wracking. It’s far worse than the time period that he spent waiting for Jensen to forgive him for his turning, much more horrible than the moments where he thought that maybe he’d lost Jensen to another suitor, longer than all of those years that Jensen was away at college being seduced by all those humans.

In the movies, there’s always screaming and cursing going on. The lady on the bed usually swears that she’s never letting her male partner touch her again and then there is a happy moment when the baby arrives.

The reality is that there is a weird tent like looking thing erected over Jensen’s belly, and he sort of looks bored.

Jensen has forbidden any family from being in the room other than Jared, and now Jared half suspects it is because Jensen wants to make up some sort of horrendous birthing story that he can tell to all of the other new mothers and fathers when they’re sitting around at play dates or whatever the fashionable parenting magazines call toddler meetings these days.

The smell of Jensen’s blood when the doctor finally cuts into him cloys at Jared nostrils, and he is the one squeezing Jensen’s hand for support instead of it being the other way around. Logically he knows that the c-section isn’t hurting his mate, that it’s bringing their child into the world, but his wolf is screaming at him to protect his mate.

Jared is not always the best with curbing his instincts, and he would try to take a deep breath except for the fact that even more of that scent would get up in his nose, and that wouldn’t be a good thing.

“You’re doing great,” the doctor encourages from where she’s working, and Jensen just rolls his eyes like not feeling a doctor cutting through his stomach to pry his baby out of his safe womb is nothing.

He smiles up at Jared and tugs their joined hands over to kiss at Jared’s quaking palm. Jared stares at his hand like he’s never seen it before, and Jensen starts to say something, but there’s a fairly icky, wet sounding noise and some medical sounding orders from the doctor before a tiny, fragile cry fills the air.

Jensen’s eyes leave Jared’s face and snap towards the noise like a hound dog going on point. Jared would make a note to mock his mate for the behavior, but his own body is straining towards the sound, and his hand is gripping Jensen’s just as tight as Jensen’s is now squeezing his.

He will never tell Jensen that he’s the first person besides the doctor and accompanying nurse to set eyes on their boy. It’s just a split second before Jensen sees him anyway, so it doesn’t really matter, but it does afford Jared the luxury of seeing his son and being able to switch his gaze fast enough to see his husband’s face the first time that he lays eye on their little baby.

Jensen’s eyes well up with unmanly tears, and his mouth stretches into the most impossibly wide grin that Jared’s ever seen on his face. The corners of his eyes are crinkling.

“Congratulations, Daddy,” Jared whispers as the nurse brings the baby over for Jensen to have a peak before they rush him off to clean him and make certain everything is okay.

Their son lets loose an ungodly sounding wail as soon as he’s no more than a foot away from his mother, and doesn’t stop no matter who holds him or tries to coo at him.

Jensen’s expression is a mixture of pride and anxiety as he whispers, “Well at least we know there’s nothing wrong with his lungs.”

Jared laughs and leans down to press a kiss to Jensen’s forehead and then, for good measure, drops one onto the tip of his nose as well.

It’s an interminably long time before their son is brought back to them.

Jensen gets wheeled off to his recovery room after the doctor pokes and prods and pulls some frankly disgusting looking stuff out of Jensen’s abdomen before stitching him up.

Jared gets herded out to the waiting area to announce to his parents and siblings that they now have a new grandson and nephew to dote upon, and that he’s just as beautiful as his mother is, and by the time that Jared is done accepting hugs and getting kissed and watching his family cry, he has at least ten messages on his phone from Jensen’s parents wanting to know how the delivery went and five from Jess.

That Michael doesn’t say a word irritates Jared a little, but he ignores it in favor of relaying all of the goodwill that he did receive back to his mate when he joins him in the recovery room.

Jensen is still beaming even though he’s starting to look tired around the eyes, but when the nurse comes in with their son for his feeding, Jensen looks like he could run a marathon he’s so eager.

Jensen’s hand completely dwarfs the small newborn bottle as he presses it against their baby’s lips. Jared is a little worried that when it’s his turn the damn thing will just disappear in his own giant paw, but that worry dissipates as his son starts making happy little noises, grunting and sucking at the bottle like a champ.

“Takes after his old man,” Jensen teases softly.

Jared beams at that because, yeah, he kind of does. His finger looks huge as he reaches over to gently stroke it over his son’s cheek, and he swears that his heart grows inside to accommodate the new feelings of love an protectiveness that are growing inside of him.

Jensen looks up at him and smiles like he can see Jared’s thoughts before looking back at their son to whisper, “Welcome to the world, Dustin Padalecki.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

FIN


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